The fate of the bison, which was brought to the verge of extinction by hide and meat hunters late in the 19th century, was repeated in Asia and Africa. During the 20th century, efforts to save wildlife and wilderness resulted in the establishment of a worldwide network of protected areas. However, these amount to less than 10 percent of the ecosystems that they were intended to conserve. As humankind has continued to increase, wildlife and natural habitats outside of these protected areas have continued to disappear and have been replaced by settlements, cultivation, and livestock. Now millions upon millions of cattle, sheep, and goats dominate and usually degrade the savannas, steppes, and subdeserts, leaving little room for the remaining wild bovids. Thanks to the demand for their meat, hides, and milk, livestock now inhabit every continent except Antarctica. In an ironic turn of events, out of the extraordinary array of 143 bovid species, only one sheep, one goat, and three bovine species have been domesticated (domestication). Yet, husbanded by humans, these three species have played a major role in hastening the demise of all the rest, including species exquisitely adapted to ecosystems in which livestock can survive only through human intervention.

Bovids are the most recent and adaptable family of hoofed mammals to evolve. The earliest bovid, known from fossil horn cores, occurs in Eurasia in the Miocene Epoch about 18 million years ago. Eotragus was a small, solitary forest and bush dweller dependent on cover. Africa's duikers and dwarf antelopes are considered closest to this ancestral type. The subsequent radiation of bovid species followed the spread of grasses, which in turn followed a change from a subtropical to a cooler, more seasonal climate in the middle Miocene. This climate change replaced subtropical woodlands with more open and productive habitats. With their superior ability to extract nutrients from a fibrous diet, ruminants evolved into a variety of species that could use a relatively narrow range of ecological conditions more efficiently than other less-specialized animals. Among the ruminants, the bovids were singularly adept at tailoring their size, shape, feeding apparatus, digestive system, dispersion pattern, and social system to a particular habitat. By partitioning ecosystems into many segments (giving each species a narrow niche), they became the most diverse and abundant large herbivores (herbivore).

The opening of a land bridge across the Red Sea connected the Arabian Peninsula and Africa during cool periods when polar ice caps lowered the sea level and thus enabled the interchange of Asian and African bovids and other ruminants. The first ruminants to enter Africa arrived in the early Miocene, before the bovids arose. Horn cores unearthed in North Africa show that Eotragus crossed over soon after evolving in Eurasia. By the mid-Miocene Gazella (gazelle), one of the oldest bovid genera, was present in East Africa and widespread in Eurasia. By the late Miocene African bovids had diversified into nine distinct tribes, most of which had Asian relatives.

However, most of today's genera and species of bovids appeared only during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, following a major invasion of Asian genera into Africa five million years ago. During the Pleistocene Ice Age, while most of the Eurasian tropical savanna fauna became extinct, Africa remained the main refuge of Plio-Pleistocene mammals.

At the climax of bovid diversity and abundance in the later Pliocene and Pleistocene (which has been called the golden age of mammals), there were many more genera and species than there are now. After the Ice Age ended some 10,000 years ago, many bovids and other ruminants became extinct in the Northern Hemisphere. Predation by hunter-gatherers has been blamed in some cases. This was also when humankind began to domesticate animals and cultivate crops, with eventual dire consequences both for their wild progenitors and the natural environment.

Nevertheless, despite loss of habitat, competition with domestic species, and overhunting virtually everywhere bovids occur, few species are yet extinct. However, many species are endangered (endangered species), and the survival of all is now entirely dependent on human beings. In the table of bovid subfamilies and tribes, the numbers of species are noted for each continent. Note that the differences between tribes of antelopes are as great as the differences between, for example, cattle (Bovini) and goats (Caprini). Members of the same tribe, which share descent from a common ancestor, mostly inhabit the same biome, occupy somewhat similar habitats, and have a similar conformation, behavioral repertoire, social organization, and mating system. (The wild Bovini are a notable exception in that they exploit a wide variety of biomes and habitats.)

Despite the many different species of bovids, their social organization can be categorized as either unsocial or social, and their mating system can be categorized as either monogamous and territorial, polygynous and territorial, or based on a male dominance hierarchy. Furthermore, there is a clear dichotomy between bovids that live in closed habitats (e.g., forest and bush) and those that live in open habitats (e.g., plains and mountains). Through the process of convergence, species of different lineages that have adapted for similar habitats come to share a number of correlated traits. Thus, closed-habitat bovids (e.g., duiker, dik-dik, and reedbuck) have a body plan that is adapted for moving in dense undergrowth, rely on hiding and concealing coloration to avoid predators, browse selectively on nonfibrous vegetation, are solitary or monogamous, and are territorial. Open-habitat bovids are mostly medium to large, do not hide except in early infancy, have a build adapted for flight in the open, have a conspicuous and distinctive coloration that advertises their presence and species, are mainly grazers or mixed feeders (graze and browse), and form herds (see antelope).

Whether the mating system is territorial or based on a male dominance hierarchy may be linked to phylogeny. The members of the subfamilies Caprinae and Bovinae, which appear to have separated from the main bovid line very early, are virtually all nonterritorial. For the rest, the Antilopinae and the duiker tribe, breeding males are territorial. All African bovids bear single young, whereas twins are common among the Antilopini, Caprini, and Boselaphini of the Northern Hemisphere.