From Handbook House Liao, page 143:
"The Turin bull (or beefbull) was one of the first alien creatures found that could mate with Terran animal stock, and the newly created crossbreed animal quickly became a food staple across several worlds near Turin."
The implication of this sentence is that the Turin Bull was an alien creature so genetically close to Terran cattle that it could interbreed.
This seems... improbable. So is it true? Did they find an alien creature that was almost genetically identical to Terran cattle?
The alternative would seem to be that somebody genetically engineered a green cow and put it there, but there are a lot of questions as to why they did it, or why nobody knows (or at least talks about) them doing it. Could it be a lost colony that somehow managed to erase its presence? Secret Terran biowarfare research that failed to achieve its goals (turin cows do produce inedible milk, maybe the green part was an unfortunate side affect)? A hilarious prank meant to confuse future generations?
Or did the author just go with a more hollywood science idea and I should stop overthinking this?
