How about a trip to Madagascar to discover a tradition related to zebu ? It would be a very rich cultural experience !

The Malagasy are various opportunities to sacrifice, exchange or consume zebu namely birth, the engagements, the wedding, circumcision, burial or exhumation. A good Malagasy-respecting must have at least a zebu to be worthy of every opportunity. As it happens, a young man can not have the hand of a young girl without giving her parents a few heads of zebu. More, parents only accept a man deemed to be a zebu thief or a former prisoner because zebu theft, believe it or not, steal a zebu is an act of bravery and seduction !

In the southern part of Madagascar, men have a hundred or even thousands of zebu heads. The wealth and fame of an individual (So social rank), are proportional to the number of owned Zebu.

Each must meet its social commitments. Those who do not have zebu, they steal those of others ! It's tradition. To become powerful, we must increase his stock by buying or stealing zebu. For example ethnicity Mahafaly, livestock of the deceased will be exhausted for making his tomb and mortuary meal. His family decorates his grave with all the frontal bones and the two horns of his zebu.

Such are the scenes of zebu theft, tradition obliges. It is only today that this practice takes another turn : banditry for economic purposes