In the western culture originated from ancient Egypt, cattle are a symbol of wealth and strength. According to the record in the Exodus of the Bible, the Israelites made a golden calf out of gold as an image of the Lord God because they had not got rid of the custom that impressed Egypt for a long time.
In China culture, the cow is a symbol of hard work. In ancient times, cattle were used to pull plows to prepare soil. Later, people knew that cattle had great power and began to have various applications, from agriculture, transportation and even military. During the Warring States period, the State of Qi also used fire oxen, and during the Three Kingdoms period, the plank road transportation of Shu and Wei also used bulls.
Huns, Mongols and other nomadic peoples, besides herding horses, herding cattle is also quite common. Mongolian grassland is rich in Mongolian cattle, and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is rich in farm cattle. Influenced by nomadic culture, it is more popular for Han people to eat beef and milk than for Jiangnan people.
The continuous rise of stock price is called "bull market" and the decline is called "bear market", because the bull symbolizes production and appreciation, and the bear has the meaning of "destroyer" and "threat".
Cattle are regarded as sacred animals in Hinduism, because the early farming in the Ganges River valley relies heavily on the strength of cattle, and cow dung is also an important fertilizer. Cattle represent the survival and vitality of the Indian nation.
Spain, on the other hand, takes cows as objects of adventure and entertainment, such as professional bullfighting and popular running cows. The matador takes advantage of the sensitivity of cattle to red and fights them by provoking them.
In modern food culture, steak or beef is an important symbol of westernization of food, and sometimes it is even used as a symbol to measure economic wealth. For example, Hitler once advocated his political proposition: "Let every family in Germany have steak and bread on the table."