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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
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.
I live in ranching country, and when I pass the cows on the road, it seems quite random to me. If I was lost, and came across a cow, I wouldn't use it for directions...
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Perhaps it is north because the cows are pointing in that direction...
Visions of Wile E. Coyote leap to mind...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Perhaps they are showing reverence to the almighty invisible polar cow.
I hear he's where 2% milk comes from.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
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
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 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!
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
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
Agreed. I live in Iowa, and the only time I really notice a uniformity is in the winter when the weather is harsh. Then they tend to stand with their backs to the wind. I would hypothesize that this is to keep the blowing snow out of their eyes.
On a side note: So browsing through Google Earth now qualifies as being a scientist? Cool! Time to update my resume!
TV Satellite dishes point south - So when I'm lost in the wilderness, that's what I look for.
I also noticed that the cows in a herd all used to point the same direction. It might be north, or it might be south. The prevailing winds in this area tend to be from the north during the winter and the south during the winter. You can ask any rancher, and he will tell you that cows stand with their backs to the wind.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
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.
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.
Indeed, keeping the sun out of their eyes would make it easier for them to spot a predator.
The claim that the scientists could rule out sunlight based on "huge variations" is absurd, given that they are using satellite photographs as their source and thus automatically selecting imagery where the sky is clear. The fact that they rely on Google Earth imagery even more specifically selects images outside the extremes of morning and evening when the sun is low on the horizon.
"He"? Dude, I'm never drinking 2% milk again. *shudder*
...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.
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?!
Which must be confusing for the cows...
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.
Visions of Wile E. Coyote leap to mind...
As well they should! He is a Super Genius, after all...
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...
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.
I found the press release by the university (press release (in German) is here) and it contains a bit more information. They also checked areas with known deviations of the magnetic field and found, that the cows seem to react stronger to the magnetic north than the geographic north.
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.
Um, I think you can safely assume that is because you didn't point a satellite camera at them. They only pose facing north for satellite photos. Sufficiently high altitude planes will work for cattle in European countries, but not North America.
Actually, that's more-or-less right. Ever seen a manatee?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I was thinking this might call for a Mythbusters episode on Discovery Channel involving a huge electromagnetic field set up in different places in the farmer's field?
They're heisencows... observing them changes the direction they are pointing.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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?
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."
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!"