Meet the Super Cow | National Geographic

In the cow shed, the man in charge of the beef herd is Patrice Lobe. Hmm, he's a big fellow. Am I all right? He's quite big, eh? He's 160 metres tall, yeah. If I saw a man like that, I wouldn't get this close to him, I don't think. I would think he was on steroids or something. I'd think he was at bodybuilding. It is 100% natural. Whereby, let's say, within so many generations, all breeders have taken the best of the best, or the more muscle of the more muscle. We move from a normal, classical type of animal, and then we select that sort of animal based on the double muscle. And when you say double muscles, do you mean it has two of every muscle? No, no, no, no. Because it looks like it does, almost, doesn't it? It has exactly the same type of muscle than any other breed, except that, in terms of quantity, each of these muscles is by far more developed. Right. This cow is technically known as a Belgian Blue, and it's the product of selective breeding. Selective breeding is the first stop on our tour of how man is using science to control nature. It's used by farmers to enhance desirable characteristics in their animals. In fact, selective breeding is all about managing sex. To create these Belgian Blues, over a hundred years, farmers have only allowed the cows and bulls with the greatest muscle mass to mate. And the result is a bull that weighs over a ton. The animals' breeders are keen to show off the results of their hard work. The bulls are shaved to best display their muscles. What they try to do is to clip the animals in order to highlight all the muscles. So you can see where all the meat is. Exactly. But even here, where they've sort of trimmed in there. Yeah, to highlight that muscle, which has got a high value. You see? And these are all going to be lean cuts, and they're all for quick cooking, are they? That's right, that's right. Because when you look at this, you can't help thinking of lunch, you know? Is it healthy? The animal, you mean? Yeah. Well, the animal is as healthy as another intensive-producing animal. So this is about the most technological that meat can get? Not the most technological. In terms of technology, we talk about selection, natural selection, having achieved that. So what is the science behind the Belgian Blues? There is a gene that regulates the growth of muscles in cattle. These cows have been selectively bred from animals that contain a copy of this gene which doesn't work. As a result, their muscles grow far larger than normal. To ensure the defective gene is passed on, sex for the Belgian Blues has been replaced by technology in the form of artificial insemination. He is basically a sperm machine. He is a sperm machine, absolutely. It's very early in the morning for... I understand. The semen is now collected, it's in the artificial vagina, and from there we will process the semen in order to be able to process artificial insemination on the cow. So precise is the technology involved, they can analyse the semen sperm by sperm to choose the ones they want. So this is... What, this is testing the sperm count? That's a sperm analyser. It's now checking, let's say, the quality of the sperm we have been collecting this morning. Green? Green is good because you see that they are very, very mobile and they are looking forward to move towards the eggs. And these are not especially muscly sperm? Don't you find that they are very muscle? Well, they look impressive to me, but I've never seen any other bull sperm. Visually, you won't see any difference. There is no way to find any difference between the bovine, the equine and the other species now. Right.