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Scientists Discover Cows Point North
Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen have discovered that cows tend to point north. The researchers studied deer in the Czech Republic and looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth. The animals tended to face north when eating or resting. "We conclude that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment," the scientists wrote in an article. I guess cows will become the must-have item for long-distance hikers now. Having an edible compass would come in handy if you get lost.
Is it possible? Yes. But I wonder how many factors they really looked into before coming to this conclusion. What about how cows perceive things like the locations of houses, barns and roads. Are a lot of farms on north/south roads or are fields on the south side of the farm so the cows are facing towards the barn or house? I don't know, but from reading the article, it doesn't sound like they looked into much other than making conclusions from Google Earth. What about the fact that aeriel photography is done during certain times of the day or during certain seasons. Surely those have an effect on cows. Poor science in my opinion. And the sad thing is that an article like this only causes people to start propogating facts that might be wrong. Not that what direction cows face is a big deal, but its common enough that it only propogates stupidity.
And why use Google Earth? Indiana (I know cows are sacred in India) seems like a prime candidate for studying cows from space. In 2005 Indiana University released a complete set of aerial photos of the whole state that had as high as 6" per pixel resolution. Which is better than Google Earth.
Besides that, how many good research scientists are going to promote their work by posting a link to Slashdot to an article in a newspaper.
That was spherical cows of uniform density - at STP.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
A cursory Google image search reveals many photos of cows at rest pointing in multiple directions. There can't be that many Norths, can there?
Maybe the cows base their orientation on sunlight rather than magnetic field. I mean, what about the magnetic field would make cows want to align with it? Nothing I can think of, but facing north might protect their heads from excess sunlight (or help rid pests from the other end).
The researchers say that they ruled out sunlight orientation based on variations in direction, but maybe the cows are smart enough to average out the direction of the sun to find north. Since cows tend to stay in the same place day-to-day, it wouldn't take long to figure out which direction in the landscape is north. And a whole herd of cows each estimating north itself should settle on true north pretty easily.
A much simpler explanation is that a north-facing cow does not have the sun in her eyes? Cows have eyes on the sides of their heads, so looking directly away from the sun is the only way to avoid glare. Cows would rest during the hottest part of the day - in the afternoon, when the sun would be furthest to the south, so resting cows would naturally tend to face north. A simple experiment could be devised to verify this hypothesis with a shade and a giant mirror.
While cows may actually have some ability to sense magnetic fields, like some other creatures can for navigation or migratory purposes, why would they do so for just standing around? I'm still inclined to believe that their north/south inclination is related to the east/west inclination of the sun.
pressure among cows.. just asking.
How many cows do I need to get a good sample? Is there any period between herding them, and them settling down to point north? Are we talking 30 seconds? 20 minutes? I'm trying to figure out if I need to take a compass or some cows. I don't have the carry the cows.
Perhaps it is north because the cows are pointing in that direction...
I shall call it, "Are You Smarter Than a Scientist?" Just pick any old science type story, read a poorly written summary of it, then 'prove' the scientists in question are idiots who didn't even consider the Most Obvious Thing. All Slashbots are welcome to compete.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
is that why Brazilian beef tastes so strange? because they face South? hmmm....
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
Didn't RTFA, but maybe it's worth asking the questions; are they pointing to geographic or magnetic north pole? Then a better hypothesis could be formulated. And what about the cows at the equator? Where are they pointing? And those in the southern hemisphere?
I think that asking all those question could give a better overview; do the cows have magneto-sensitive ions in their brain like pigeons? Or do they only want to avoid the sun in their eyes?
Maybe cows in India are into Feng Shui.
When I first saw this my first thought was "idle.slashdot.org."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
when eating or resting
As distinct from all the other varied activities cows fill their day with.
I'm very glad that Slashdot finally added the ability to include informative pictures with their stories. For too long, I've seen news stories about cows and wondered to myself, "What exactly is a cow? What does one look like?" Now, thanks to this excellent feature, I no longer have to suffer the embarrassment of cow ignorance.
Thank you Slashdot!
Some survivalist type of guy was condemning your average suburbanite for not being able to tell which way North is on a cloudy day.
The answer is not moss on trees.
I couldn't figure it out and I thought the guy was just a nut.
... and I claim my five pounds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7575459.stm
This one also states that the herd orientation is different around the South Atlantic Anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly
Probably due to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetite
And can't forget us.. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=49775
Bring 25 cows to the north pole and see if they all arrange themselfs in a star formation.
One would need to find out where Gary Larson lives. If he is in the northern portions of the globe - Alaska, Siberia - then we can only deduce that the cows are paying tribute to their master.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
The cows in the pictures are pointing left, which is south from where I'm sitting.
TV Satellite dishes point south - So when I'm lost in the wilderness, that's what I look for.
The cow in the picture is clearly facing West, judging by the outlines of the continents on its hide.
Perhaps this north facing tendency is the result of the cow magnets that farmers insert into their animals.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...is that all the pictures were taken from the west. Everybody knows that a cow's left side is her good side. The cows weren't facing north, they were just trying to look good for the cameras.
Must smell terrible according to this map.
If they are only facing close to north I'd bet that they line up pretty exactly with airport runways.
But they're a bugger to strap to your wrist while you are out hiking.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
This article does not make any mention of Cow Magnets, used to prevent hardware disease in cows.
IANAP but I am curious if it is related.
Not to mention 'underwater goats with snorkels and flippers'
Or could it be because, in the northern hemisphere at least, the winds tend to blow from the west and south, and so facing generally north would enable them more easily to see the approach of potential predators? This behaviour has been commonly observed in grazing animals for thousands of years. Have we forgotten our ancestral knowledge?
I'm still trying to figure out how to cram one inside a compass?
After I just spent all that money on a new compass!
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Since George W. Bush got elected, they've all been thinking about stampeding to Canada.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Won't someone think of the poor vegetarians! The horror! The horror!
...but they cannot tell us angles of inclination because.. *ahem* ... there is no cow level.
I'll be here all week and stay away from the veal.
Or do they align to the north even south of the equator.
Regardless, it's a strange phenomenon that's a bit difficult to explain!
Scientists discover water is wet and fire can burn you.
Film at 11.
When I was young my bed always used to faced west (as in: my head pointed west when lying in it). Whenever we went on holiday I always woke up facing west as well. Even if the bed was in a totally different direction. I have no idea about the cause, I just stopped doing it when I got older. I'm pretty sure I don't have a built-in compass now though, so I'm a bit sceptical about cows having them;-)
So, here's an alternative explanation: cows have to keep cool. The hotter the sun is, the less surface they want to expose to it. For a cow, that generally means not to let their sides, which have the most surface, be exposed to the sun. And since there's the most sun at noon, when the sun is either in the south or in the north, depending on the hemisphere the cow lives on, cows tend to either point north or south a bit more than in other directions. Add to that that google maps, on which the research was based, actively selects sunny pictures, thereby boosting this effect, and we'd have an explanation for most cows pointing either north or south. Now add to that that the guys that did the research only selected countries on the northern hemisphere and we have a perfect explanation that does not involve magnets;-)
Ok, I might be entirely wrong, but at least my explanation is just as good as the explanation in the rather-short-on-details-article;-)
0x or or snor perron?!
Some cows do have magnets inside, to protect their digestive track from any nails/scrap metal/etc that they may accidentally eat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_magnet
Not that it would necessarily end up in the correct orientation to its head, or that it could torque enough to be noticeable, but if I had sharp objects attached to a compass inside me, I might try to keep pointed the right way
Perhaps cows just don't like the sun in their eyes?
*someone whispers something about the southern hemisphere in her ear*
Perhaps Australian cows are weird and DO like the sun in their eyes?
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
Besides any reasons for why they tend to point northwards, I think the astonishing thing is that no one has realised this before. Humans are good at noticing patterns and this seems as though it would be such an obvious one to a sizeable part of humanity -- farmers -- around the world.
Never before has the slashdot junk character filter been so unfortunate.
Moo.
You don't want to ever mate northern and southern cows. The offspring are "spinners", which are only useful as rodeo bulls or for producing milk shakes.
By the way, do rodeo bulls in the northern hemisphere tend to spin in the opposite direction as southern hemisphere bulls? Someone should do a study on this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GKu59S2rvs
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
But will they fit in my pocket?
Holy cows face Mecca.
Spin around in circles? These needs to be tested.
Cows can't create sunglasses. Standing North/South is the next best thing.
I hate to say it, but their sampling is flawed. Since they were using satellite images for their study, they automatically selected a sampling for which sunlight was visible. Even if the sunlight were not currently visible, the kindly bovines might just prefer to stare in that direction out of habit from when the sun IS visible.
Who are these people who call themselves "Scientists", anyway?
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
In scandinavia, cows ain't heading to north when resting or eating. Last week I was photographing cows on few different places and every cow what was resting or eating, was lined to random direction. They are mostly on same area where the "group" is, but small groups were moved to separated area, but still "close" (where did they see the main "group". And I did know where was north because I used map to the two other location where I was driving and one location was near our farm.
Maybe the cows orientate themselves away from the sun, and the magnetic field of the earth has nothing to do with it.
To test the influence or lack of influence of the magnetic field of the earth on cows, it would be possible to locally change the direction of the magnetic field with a giant helmholz coil. Then they can see if the cows really orient themselves using the magnetic field, or not.
. . . or so Monty Python tells us . . . so if the cows are looking up north . . . well, sorry . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Since the vast majority of cows live in the northern hemisphere, the sun would tend to be in the south. Maybe they're just facing away from the sun.
Ha ha, I like the world map on the cow. Very... Ah forget it.
I've always wondered why I become fixated on the big dipper after eating a really good burger.
They claim to have been able to rule out the wind as a factor, but I'm skeptical.
Any rancher can tell you that cows tend to face into the wind. And the wind is predominantly northerly in many parts of the world.
... for shoving up magnetic rods up their butts in order to get metal filings out of their digestive tracts.
The scientists apparently did not investigate whether the theology of the cows played any part in facing north.
I did some research on google earth and it seems a majority of humans stand perpendicular to the surface of the earth!!! This looked interesting so I did some more research and it seems the rest of the people are lying PARALLEL to the surface of the earth!!! Amazing, just amazing!!
Cows are actually pointing South, not north.
I am therefore I was
You would have to choose between eating the cow and staying lost or using the cow as a compass and staying hungry...
We conclude that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment
Really? Cows look North in the Southern hemisphere? If so, then they may have something. If they only looked at Northern Hemisphere cattle, then I'd say that they were merely avoiding Sun glare.
The earth is a sphere, so you can't just look at surface patches and expect a uniform distribution. For example, any cow you drop on the north pole is always going to be on a North/South axis. Since there are more cows at higher latitudes, you get preferential North/South orientation even if cows just stand around randomly.
the Astrodome, and a tilt-a-whirl. We're gonna spin those cows 'til they puke twice, once for each stomach. Then we're gonna randomly shove them out into the dark on the fifty-yard line and wait a couple hours until they settle. Then we're gonna take an infrared photo from the top of the dome facing down. And then, you're gonna bring me Kari from the Mythbusters and I'm gonna give you the photo.
At that point, I don't care about the damn cows. Knock yourself out.
Most of the year in the northern hemisphere the sun is more southerly than northerly. The opposite is true in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps they don't like the sun in their eyes?
br/
Any Dark Tower fan knows that everything follows the Path of the Beam.
From the Cow Days (South Park) page:
I suspect the simple explanation is that the Clock is at the North Pole and the cows are just respectfully worshipping their God.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In case the city-slicker slashdot readers don't know, it's a standard practice to give all your cows a magnet in a kind of pill form. It helps collect all the random bits of metal that they eat.
http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_magnet
They're sold at any rural hardware or ranch supply store.
A "For Dummies" book I'm reading (I'll leave you to guess which one; it's quite unexpected) says that cows aim their back ends at the wind, for some reason.
So therefore, I call bullshit on TFA! :)
But there's still no cure for cancer. And cows are still causing global warming. But, guddarnit, the f**kers are always facing north! What a relief it is to know that! =)
facing their idol
has anyone else noticed the interesting pattern in that cow's spots?
Though it probably took the scientists a long time to do this study, I bet it took google earth's sources even longer to only include images of cows pointing northward!
So wouldn't that mean the cows would always be pointing Northwest at 0900 at pointing Northeast at 1600? Wouldn't they only be pointing due North at high noon?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
we want to know why!!
It's obvious that the cows control the magnetic field.
Slashdot.....moos that matters.
look east, west, or south, and in the northern hemisphere, one or both eyes are being blinded by the sun
look north, and the sun illuminates your vista from above your backside
so looking north, driven by nothing more than the sun's transit, is very useful for an animal that is hunted and eaten
to casually acquire maximum visual acuity by simply orienting north seems to be a simple herbivore survival tactic, driven by nothing more than the sun's transit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Alex Trebek: "The sound a doggie makes?"
Sean Conney: "Moo"
Alex Trebek: "That is incorrect"
Sean Connery: "Well that's the sound your mother made last night..."
the correlationisnotcausation tag? Honestly, it gets trotted out anytime an article mentions even the most tentative conclusions drawn about anything. Yes, thank you, we've been to highschool science. Yet correlation that is statistically significant in data which has been thoroughly examined for possible confounding factors and bias is meaningful. Causation may possibly account for the correlation, in one direction or another. Or the two elements may each have a common cause in some other factor, possibly not present in the data. But it does actually mean something. That's why we collect data and study it.
I have a question. At what point in our scientific history did we determine that EVERY piece of data scraped off the top of the Googlized Internet steaming shitpile is actually useful? Am I the only one here who thinks this should have been categorized in the who-gives-a-shit department?
I can't believe that time or money was actually wasted on this. What benefit could this possibly provide? Better tasting burgers? The ability to create 3.7% milk? Give me a fucking break.
Don't they put magnets in one of the cow's stomachs in case they eat something metal?
http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html
Humans have been observing cows for millenia. Don't you think someone would have noticed this by now? Its not like cowherds have a lot of other things on their mind when they are minding the herd.
Oh look! A picture of a cow! Golly, I almost forgot what they are, thanks for reminding me, Slashdot. Here, just in case somebody needs it, Taco should edit this into the OP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle . Oh, and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North . And just in case anybody gets lost, you are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet .
You don't need all those other poles. Have you considered that it maybe that the alignment of cows south to north is what causes the earth to have magnetic pole on the first place? Ha? HA!?
You can't handle the truth.
What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying. -- Nikita Khruschev
I suppose they have information about cows pointing north. This is the sort of research that would make me want to become a scientist -- even though it might risk me being caught in Pokemon Red (fyi: my brother caught a scientist in pkmn red sometime nearer 1999).
signature is pants
Mythbusters episode coming on! To prove their hypothesis, did they build a giant, field-sized electromagnet to show that the cows actually face magnetic north? No. Mythbusters to the rescue!
Seriously, don't these researchers have anything better to do?
The cow in the picture for the story is obviously facing left, not North. What maroons these guys are... ;)
So to run a comparison shall we provide farmer Ted with cow sunglasses and see if they decide to point hither tither?
Do cows in the Southern hemisphere point to the South Pole?
I've been backpacking for several years now, and I always carry a cow with me!
If the cows face North, I guess global warming will be worse in the South.......
If you were a cow, which would you rather have -- sun in your eyes (which still point forwards even though their eyes are on the sides of their head) or a nice warm bum and sun brushed udder?
It's also possible they're facing north out of comfortâ" It is common to feed cows large magnets about the size of a thick index finger that stay in one of their stomachs for the remainder of their lives. It's there to keep accidentally eaten nails or iron particles from damaging the cow further.
Maybe the cows are facing north because any other direction scrapes the magnet unnecessarily?
http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html
I can't wait to get me one of them fancy new COWMPASSES!
Cows = Santa detectors.
maybe.
Really? Someone paid money for this study?
Two things:
1. I grew up on a farm where we raised a lot of cows. It is quite random in which direction a cow faces. In my 'scientific observation', it really depends on the direction they are grazing in, or better yet...walking towards (laughs hysterically).
2. This reminds of the study that was paid for by tax dollars a few years ago that scientists did to determine why bears crossed the road. If memory serves, it was a million plus.
If my tax dollars were spent on this experiment, I'll be PISSED! WHO CARES and WHY? JUST ASK A RANCHER FOR PETE'S SAKE!!!!
It must be some bovine religious thing. Of couse, they might just be waiting for Santa.
News for herds. Stuff that matters.
If our magnetic sense is very sensitive, maybe the cows are being affected by their magnets, which might over time tend to align per the Earth's magnetic field -- I don't think that's an unreasonable guess.
Hmm... I've noticed that my own sense of which directions are east/west is affected by how far north I am. I wonder if the skew caused by N/S travel could be "fixed" by sleeping with a magnet suitably aligned and placed under my pillow.
Possibly related, I've noticed that snakes generally move from east to west. If a snake is being a nuisance and I don't want it to come back, I've learned to always take it west of my property; then I never see it again. But if I release it to the east, it'll be back in a day or two. Wonder what would happen if I fed 'em a magnet first? :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Someone says, "In America, if an adult cow is grazing, it's almost certainly a dairy cow."
Not true. The dams of all those steers being shipped to market are ranch cows, which you'll find grazing on the open range. Second, most dairies feed largely silage and baled hay, since milk-producing cows need more protein than range graze provides.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The linked article is not the actual journal article, so they don't explain what they did or detail their results.
If you look at a summary of a paper you're not an expert in and come up quickly with some potential problems, it's likely that someone who works on this for months if not years is going to have considered that at some point. The fact that it's not in the summary does not mean they didn't look at it and you shouldn't assume they're bad researchers for not making sure this summary (which someone else wrote) had all the technical details.
For example, the external factors like houses and barns, that seems pretty obvious. They would be unearthly stupid to not factor that in. There are ways in which you could factor that in too. If you find the article and they just look at cows removed from all else and find this bias, you're right, that could be from numerous other effects, not the least of which is HUMAN tendancy to north/south.
The conclusion you should get is "poor summary," not poor science. You're the one jumping to unsafe conclusions.
Another issue: how many good scientists promote their work by posting a link to an article? I don't know, are you sure they did or is this "samzenpus" writing this without any input from the researchers?
what about the sun? in the northern hemisphere the sun is always slightly southward, many animals like to either warm their butts with it or keep their eyes pointed away from it. for cows in the Czech republic this means facing north. check (pun?) cows in australia or argentina to see if they are pointing south.
not great science if magnetism was the only explanation they could think up.
The researchers only examined cows in the northern hemisphere over a short period of time. All livestock owners know that their stock (cows, horses, sheep, goats, etc.) will graze with their backs to the sun - they don't like having the sun in their eyes.
Ah! Some had theorized magnetic anomalies cause crop circles. Now we know. The cows did it!
.ooM
www.cultdeadcow.com
mmmmm....compass burgers....
i like animals. they taste really good!
they only look north when being photographed.
Ok so a fact is that cows like to stand with their butts towards the wind. Just Imagine that in the time these satellite pictures were taken the prevailing wind came from the south, that leaves these cows with their nose pointing north. By the way where does the conclusion about cows being sensitive to the magnetic field come from? Maybe they feel with their large body mass the Coriolis acceleration! Maybe we need to have a look at what people who have put out this third rate stuff, this is not science by any standard.
That's interesting, because all the steak I eat goes south...
And I thought it was to keep their asses warm facing a more southern sun...
Damn.
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
My grandpa always said that cattle and horses ate facing the wind...
Well, perhaps the area west of your property has more prey for them and the area to the east is comparatively hostile? Really, too many potential variables.
As for a magnet under your pillow... For cows, the magnet actually is inside them--I'm argue you can't feel a magnet under your pillow nearly as well as when it's nestled in your stomach.
I mean, I think you misunderstood the point of cows having magnets in their stomachs. It doesn't change, alter, improve, or twiddle their natural "magnetic sense", it's what *gives* them one in the first place.
...Welcome our new electromagnetic bovine overlords
Well, they don't call mountain oysters the south end of a north bound bull for nothin'.
Hmmmm.. Gets me thinking. If cows are always facing north, how do they ever get back to the south end of the pasture?
where was the consensus taken
did they view this with cows that were at the equator or below it. if so, then ok, thats cool.
if not it might just be that like us, cows just liked the feel of the sun on their backs and out of their eyes. that is why they point north, to put their head in their shadow and out of the sun.
Becose, the cows when are stable, this cant are a point a west,south, north. ... or any place but not always looking the north
There just *has* to be a South Park joke somewhere in this....
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Having an edible compass would come in handy if you get lost.
If you were lost would you eat your compass? Sounds like a disaster.
Is this really new news? I had read about this phenomena years ago.
What's more interesting is how the same scientists found that cows near the LHC tended to sleep facing it instead. Why isn't that in the summary instead?!
Can I magnetize a pig by stroking it with a cow? How many cows can I hang head to arse like paper clips?
The journal article is here. The abstract gives some details:
"We demonstrate by means of simple, noninvasive methods (analysis of satellite images, field observations, and measuring âoedeer bedsâ in snow) that domestic cattle (n = 8,510 in 308 pastures) across the globe, and grazing and resting red and roe deer (n = 2,974 at 241 localities), align their body axes in roughly a northâ"south direction. Direct observations of roe deer revealed that animals orient their heads northward when grazing or resting. Amazingly, this ubiquitous phenomenon does not seem to have been noticed by herdsmen, ranchers, or hunters. Because wind and light conditions could be excluded as a common denominator determining the body axis orientation, magnetic alignment is the most parsimonious explanation. To test the hypothesis that cattle orient their body axes along the field lines of the Earth's magnetic field, we analyzed the body orientation of cattle from localities with high magnetic declination. Here, magnetic north was a better predictor than geographic north. This study reveals the magnetic alignment in large mammals based on statistically sufficient sample sizes. Our findings open horizons for the study of magnetoreception in general and are of potential significance for applied ethology (husbandry, animal welfare). They challenge neuroscientists and biophysics to explain the proximate mechanisms."
Pull out an atlas and look at the earth.
It's easier to sleep and eat when you're head's on the uphill or "North" side.
Duh.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
It would be amazing if the cows somehow are aligned to true north (ie, the north pole). The article doesn't seem to say but it would seem more likely the cows are aligned to the magnetic north pole (located in Canada). I'd figure being scientists and all, they would know there's a difference.
the cows pointing North/South represent ones. The others 0.
Sorry - these guys should have spoken to some paraglider or hang glider pilots before their study. What they would have been told is that at wind speeds exceeding about 5 knots at ground level, cows and horses put their tails into the wind, and keep their heads downwind.
I have used cow-filled paddocks as excellent wind socks on numerous occasions: if cows are NOT aligned in any particular direction, then I know winds are lighter than 5 knots, and I look for other tell-tales of wind direction (smoke, or dust mainly).
At over 5 knots though, cows are extremely reliable, and I have never suffered a downwind landing after checking the cow-orientation of a nearby field.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Poor science in my opinion.
Besides that, how many good research scientists are going to promote their work by posting a link to Slashdot to an article in a newspaper.
Clearly we can't stop you from criticizing a paper you haven't read. But here is the abstract and here is the full PDF of the paper that the newspaper article refers to.
And in case you aren't familiar with PNAS - it is the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (of the USA). Feel free to look up their Impact Factor, where you will see PageRank lists them #4 and the combined system ranks them #5. You can also find the editorial guidelines for that journal and read about the peer-review process. If you would like to somehow equate this to "poor science", you are entitled to your opinion, though the facts stand against it.
The scientists who conducted this survey are clearly missing the point here. Cows fart towards the equator because the methane they produce is lighter than air, and warm air is lighter than cold air, and the equator is warmer than the poles, and so farting cows in the northern hemisphere tend to "face north" as they fart south. Isn't it obvious?
If you still aren't convinced, try this little experiment at home:
Are you "facing north"? See!
Was magnetic variation taken into account for these studies? I live in Colorado where we have 9 degrees of magnetic variation, meaning that magnetic north is actually offset about 9 degrees off off true north. Magnetic variation changes around the world. I would be curious to know if this had been taken into account for these studies.
From TFA:
Seems to me that they're assuming that cows have no recollection of what they did yesterday. I can't help but think that if they have ten sunny days in a row, the cow will learn fairly quickly to take the sun broadside. But if they have ten cloudy days after that, are they assuming that the cows will spin brainlessly out of control and lie every which way? I suspect they'll keep lying in the same direction that brought them warmth before, waiting with that blind stupid hope that it will suddenly become warm again.
The only thing almost as powerful on a simple brain as negative reinforcement is positive reinforcement, and it seems to me a stretch of sunny days could set a herd of cows sitting north-south for a month waiting for another sunny day. They're deeply stupid animals in some respects, but they're not so dumb that they don't have some dim recollection of what scratched the itch yesterday or ten days ago or whatever.
And I'll leave it to you all to figure out how to get a cow in a vacuum. If it's a household vacuum you'll blow a fuse, if it's a scientific vacuum I'd guess you'd have milk and farts everywhere. But that's for another post ...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Ok, so what about herds in the area of the Bermuda Triangle (supposing there is at least one)?
Man... i'm LMAO; This is one of the funniest threads ever on slashdot.
What about the BluRay cow?
http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html
Did they control for whether these observed cows had these magnets installed?
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I would be curious if the magnets move inside the cow depending on which way the cow is facing. Could it be that the cow tends to stand in whatever direction reduces the discomfort caused by those magnets? They are about 3 inches long and attract sharp hardware, so it seems conceivable, at least.
Unfortunately for that idea, the researchers said that the Czech deer they studied do the same thing. Could the Czech deer have been on farms where they might have had the magnets, too? The article doesn't give any indication.
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. (Ambrose Bierce)
> Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the
> University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands
> of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain,
> Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied
> 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic.
> The deer tended to face north when resting or
> grazing.
These countries are all in the northern hemisphere. How do they know the cows aren't pointing their butts towards the sun to keep them warm? They should also examine cows in the southern hemisphere to see which direction they point. If they point south then my butt-warming theory is surely more plausible than this!
It seems most cow pictures tend to be from the side (perhaps they are less 'attractive' from the front, and certainly from behind). One might also say that having a bright light behind the camera would illuminate the cow ideally for a photograph (the sun).
Therefore, you have a situation where the side of a cow will be photographed with a strong available light source. Whether it is early in the day or later, it is possible the best photographs will be taken from cows standing either northward or southward.
The question then branches into two fairly different questions:
Do photographers consider a cow picture with the head on the left side 'better' than with the head on the right?
and...
Would people rather take pictures of cows earlier in the day, or later?
Since we are operating on assumptions, I will also assume most people have more important things to do on the start of a work day than take pictures of cows. That means that photographers generally consider pictures of cows with the head on the left side better than with the head on the right.
Discuss.
That was my thought too... if cows prefer sun on their backs and not in their eyes, the vast majority of them will point north. Because there have got to be waaay more cows in the Northern Hemipshere.
Why? Because there is much more land in the Northern Hemisphere (about 2.5 times as much... even more excluding Antartica), and much more human population in the Northern Hemisphere (about 8 times as much), so it stands to reason that there are gonna be a lot more cows too.
My bicyles
Could this be due to the rather large magnets the cows are forced to swallow to pick up nails, and other metals they inadvertantly may eat while grazing?
Well, it's not like the deer would have voluntarily swallowed the cow magnets; as you note they're the size of a man's finger, and are usually given with a pill baller, cuz the cows aren't going to suck 'em down either. The metal trash they DO swallow is a lot smaller (nails and wire fragments). But ... I'm not sure it matters, remembering that the earth's magnetic field affects iron, magnetized or not.
And I'm not sure THAT matters...
When I travel more than about 500 miles north or south of wherever I'm living, I start to feel as if the world has rotated around me, so north is no longer where it belongs. Normally I have very good directional sense, but the effect of this is that even tho I know better, my gut is SURE the sun is going to come up in the west. -- When I moved from MT to CA, it took a while for this sensation to subside and the world to feel correctly-oriented again. I've come to believe this is a probably-normal (if somewhat more sensitized than average) reaction to magnetic north, which of course changes its "angle" depending on where you are. There's some thought that migrating birds navigate by just such a sense.
Anyway, I see no reason why cows shouldn't have a similar sense, having evolved on the same planet.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Do I really buy the argument that a bunch of random dorks in the comment section of Slashdot know something that the people who actually worked on the study have no idea about? That these so-called scientists were too stupid to consider something so basic?
...I dunno, but it sure is funny trolling you guys! TFY! LOL!
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
"I guess cows will become the must-have item for long-distance hikers now"
I guess he doesn't know much about cows, they are not sure footed like deer. Cows are really are poor, sad creatures that get upset very easily. But heck you might be too if someone played with your tits every day and kept you pregnant almost all the time, but never allowed you to have sex - No wonder they have the long faces...
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
Quite a few years back New Scientist had an article where the writer speculated about why cows tend to be parallel to railway lines. His explanation went like this:
- for rectangular fields beside railway lines, 2/3 of the possible gate locations would make the cow enter the field parallel to the railway lines
- even if cows turn, the cow direction is reset two or more times a day, when the cow is milked. (and a 5am/4pm milking schedule, say, would reset them not long before commuter trains pass!)
- cows tend to wander forwards only turning slowly, unlike (say) sheep
the last line is a bit of a stretch, but this was a bit of fun, not a peer-reviewed paper. Anyway, whatever the explanation it really does happen - if you have a countryside commute, look out the window and check out the parallel cows.
There's a warning here: http://www.cowmagnetscam.org/#Fraud-Switch-Strong "Sellers of cow magnets are attempting to pass off a new type of Stainless Steel cow magnet as industry standard ALNICO magnets. IMPORTANT: this is not an indication of how much a magnet is attracted to regular metal objects (like the metal hardware ingested by cows). Properly designed stainless steel cow magnets may be the strongest available even though they do not appear to stick to themselves with great strength. The real test is to use a GAUSS meter."
Did you move beyond landmarks that you tended to use to orient yourself? You would know better than me, but if you are used to thinking that Idaho, the Western Range, potatoes, or whatever it is, are to your West or Southwest, then being on the far side of them might mess you up.
I had similar problems when I moved or traveled a few hundred miles north of where I was raised. I think the issue was that I was raised in Ohio, so toward Toledo or Lake Erie was North. When I moved to Detroit temporarily, I was constantly turned around. Of course, if you are correct, that could be magnetism, too, but I had a feeling of being on the wrong side of the land in between. A similar thing happens, too, when I think about directions with respect to locations in continental Europe or Asia. That can't involve magnetism very well, especially since I am just looking at maps or pondering about locations without actually being there. I think I tend to orient myself with the Atlantic Ocean to the East or the Pacific to the West, which, of course, doesn't work so well when considering the Eastern Hemisphere.
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. (Ambrose Bierce)
Cows like sunbaths. Google pictures are taken mostly around noon, when sun is coming right from south. They simply point their arses south to get the heat and their faces north to avoid the sun in their eyes.
Maybe they point north to keep the sun out of their eyes? Just because everyone who ever got cancer once ate a pickle does not mean pickles cause cancer.
Maybe cows just don't like looking into the afternoon sun all day.
Do Australian cows tend to point south?
Well, meat *is* full of iron. Maybe they can't help themselves?
Heh, My ad under the summary is a turntable :)
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
First, if cows always pointed north when grazing, they would either end up walking backwards, or they would all end up bunched against the north fence of their enclosure.
Second, cows are herd animals. They tend to group and follow their leader - which means they end up pointing the same way.
I remember years ago OMNI magazine printed that scientist proved cheese on pizza burned the roof of peoples mouths. The next month they printed a retraction because, pizza sauce retained heat much longer than cheese.
So when do we really find out why they seem to point north?
Maybe they face north to keep the sun out of their eyes?
Maybe they do it when the sky is cloudy because of habit?
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
I don't typically orient by landmarks. I orient by "feel" then check landmarks, or my internal map system, as confirmation. In any event, this isn't a landmark thing, and applied both in places I'd never been before, and when I went back there 2 years later. It's a sensation rather like water in the ears, but more subtle. Almost like mild vertigo. Your description of "being on the wrong side of the land between" sounds about right.
Also, when I drove from Montana to San Diego, I could feel it getting more and more "rotated" (always in the same direction) as I went south and west, starting about the middle of Utah -- by more than the changed angle wrt magnetic north, so I'm inclined to think both distance and the direction of the field itself are involved. Check out the charts at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_north !!
When I went to San Francisco the year before, I did not have this problem. Either not far enough south, or perhaps because the angle wrt the magnetic field was the same as in MT.
Looking at maps doesn't "turn me around", but I've always been a map freak, I think it's normal to carry both world and local maps in your head, and to be able to backtrack without thinking about it. I'm never lost, and I don't need a GPS either. :) Which is probably WHY I *noticed* this "turned around" sensation -- the earth-feel (for lack of a better word) no longer matched my internal map.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Cows have a large magnet in one of their stomaches (forced to swallow) to catch metal shards, perhaps this has a connection to why they point in that direction? Just a thought.
It is well known that chinese cows point sideways.
Has anyone considered the effect of cow magnets?