Editing Gayal (section)

== Distribution and habitat ==
[[File:Mithun, Glao Lake.jpg|thumb|A gayal cow and calf, [[Arunachal Pradesh]], India]]
Gayals are essentially inhabitants of hill-forests. In India, semi-domesticated gayals are kept by several [[South Asian ethnic groups|ethnic groups]] living in the hills of [[Tripura]], [[Mizoram]], [[Assam]], [[Arunachal Pradesh]], [[Manipur]] and [[Nagaland]]. They also occur in the [[Chittagong Hill Tracts]].<ref name=Lydekker1888/> In northern Burma, they occur in the [[Kachin State]], and in adjacent Yunnan are found only in the Trung ({{zh|s=独龙河}}) and [[Salween River]] basins.<ref name=Simoons1984/>

The role of the mithun is central to the lives of many residents of these areas, including [[transhumance|transhumant]] ones who pair mithun management with [[sago palm]] harvesting:{{quote|Although livestock is highly characteristic of the high Himalayan way of life in general, with yaks and sheep being predominant species until recently, the mithun, or gayal (''Bos frontalis'') is the most prominent animal exploited by Eastern Himalayan groups ... The mithun is a semi-domesticate, managed in fenced tracts of forests rather than being kept in or near villages. Outside North East India, mithun are primarily imported for the purpose of cross- breeding with other bovids, for example in Bhutan. It is very common among Eastern Himalayan languages to find lexical sets denoting fauna in which the mithun is lexicalized as a “prototypical” meat animal, with all other terms being derived ... Terms for ‘mithun’ in other languages of Arunachal Pradesh are typically cognate with Aka fu (e.g. Miji ʃu, Koro sù, Puroik ʧa and Proto-Tani *ɕo), suggesting that this is probably not a case of semantic shift from a wild species. The implication is that the semi-wild mithun was seen as the core species, and the true domesticates such as cattle, which arrived subsequently, as marginal to the system.<ref>{{cite book |author=Blench, R. and M. W. Post |editor1-last=Owen-Smith |editor1-first=T. |editor2-last=Hill |editor2-first=N. |title=Trans-Himalayan Linguistics Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area |date=2013 |publisher=De Gruyter |location=Berlin|isbn=978-3-11-031083-2|pages=71–104|chapter=Rethinking Sino-Tibetan phylogeny from the perspective of North East Indian languages: Blench, R. and M. W. Post}}</ref>}}

{{Unreferenced section|date=November 2017}}
In Nagaland, the animals are kept semi-wild, and live in herds, being watched over by special caretakers assigned by the villages or the owner of the herd. They respond to a horn kept specially for the individual caretaker or actual owner to call them. From birth until the time of butchering or market, the Mithun remain in the herd, and roam mostly freely throughout the forests.