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.

Comments

You too can be an armchair scientist.

[suso]

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.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[baldass_newbie]

They may just like sun on their backs and not in their eyes.
Not everything requires 'scientific' conjecture (which is, I think, your point.)

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[bugnuts]

They may just like sun on their backs and not in their eyes.

Next, these researchers will discover a bizarre new breed of Australian cows that like to point south.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[suso]

Yes, but I also just wanted to be the first to call this finding bullshit. ;-)

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that the cow in the picture is clearly pointing west. :=)

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[SoCalChris]

I live in Montana, and there's plenty of cattle up here.

There was an article in the paper last winter about ranchers having to roam their pastures at night looking for cattle giving birth (They give birth in the middle of winter). The calves would immediately need to be taken to a barn, otherwise they would quickly freeze in the -20 to -30 temperatures we frequently get during winter nights.

Adult cows are very hardy though, and survive just fine in extreme cold, although they do tend to huddle together to block the wind and conserve each others heat.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Thelasko]

I believe a cow's eyes are on the sides of their head. Not at the front of their head, like ours. Therefore, the sun would be in their right eye in the morning, and the left eye in the afternoon.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Paradise Pete]

I don't see why you would think that considering sunlight is not a "scientific" conjecture, but anyway, from TFA:

.

Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found meant that the scientists were able to rule out those factors as being responsible for the direction they were facing.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[twoallbeefpatties]

Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found meant that the scientists were able to rule out those factors as being responsible for the direction they were facing.

Thanks for playing our game! Please accept this consolation prize - RTFA: The Home Game! Now you can play RTFA right from the comfort of your own television set!

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[jacquesm]

not to mention goats in 4 varieties of leg length, uphill goats, downhill goats, leftfacing goats and rightfacing goats. Legs on the upper slope will be shorter.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[jacquesm]

Well, I have this stash of about 400 neodymium magnets, I'm going to have lots of fun burrying them in the local farmers fields in exciting patterns.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Anonymous Coward]

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant cow." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the cow standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's cows all the way down!"

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[G-forze]

Or maybe satellites take images at noon when the lighting is best because the sun happens to be at its highest (and in the south)?

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[QuantumPion]

Maybe the cows know global warming is an imminent danger, and are trying to avert the situation by providing a net thrust on the Earth to push us into a higher orbit.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[HTH NE1]

How about learned patterns of sunlight corresponding to landmarks? Or did they also try blinding the cows?

Or sealing them inside a large white dome with no discernible edges so that it was all white to infinity?

And did they ask for guns? lots of guns?

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[HTH NE1]

Well, I have this stash of about 400 neodymium magnets, I'm going to have lots of fun burrying them in the local farmers fields in exciting patterns.

Try to get them to spell out "eat mor chiken".

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[liam193]

I believe your right. It appears that the first was, in fact, a shorten version of the longer post. Both conveyed the same concept and nearly all details could be implied from the original statement.

Furthermore, I believe it should be pointed out that the first post was only a single sentence in length; however, the second post was a full three paragraphs of text.

I just wrote this to point out that your statement was indeed correct and appeared too short so I figured I should expand on it. Perhaps the second poster will understand a three paragraph explanation of your statement.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[speedingant]

What happens when they graze at the north pole..? Do they stand up on end?

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[s4ck]

baldass and bignuts.. lolz..

what was the comment again?

..

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Cumstien]

I'm still trying to get my cow to float on the surface of a small dish of water. Am I the only one having problems with this?

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[fbjon]

Speaking of correlation, who the hell tagged this story with "correlationisnotcausation"? As if the magnetic field would somehow align itself with the cows.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[chefmonkey]

I believe your right.

You believe his right to do what?

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Free the Cowards]

The alternative to causation is not only reverse causation. Correlation could be due to causation in either direction, but also due to a shared cause or even total coincidence.

For example, the building I live in is lined up north/south. Is this due to the Earth's magnetic field? No, it's because it's built on a north/south road.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[MightyYar]

who the hell tagged this story with "correlationisnotcausation"?

Clearly, they were referring to the Google practice of using cows to orient their aerial photographs northward.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[sir fer]

you sir resemble the southern end of north-facing cow

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Thelasko]

Be careful how you read this.

Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found

!=

Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight at the moment when the beasts were found

The first one could mean the scientist ruled out the amount of sunlight the area gets on average. (Oslo gets less sun than Palermo)

The second one means they took the pictures at various times in the day.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[Xemu]

They may just like sun on their backs and not in their eyes.

As most glider pilots can tell you, cows have their backs against the wind. We use them for wind cues during emergency landings.

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[gregbot9000]

All cows have a magnet in their belly, it is a little known fact outside of ranching, but true. It is fed to them by farmers to collect any pieces of iron that might be left in fields from wire and machines. It may be that these are most comfortable to the cow when facing north.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_magnet

Re:You too can be an armchair scientist.

[solferino]

Chickens are also fed a smaller version of these, just after birth.
It's called a chick magnet.

Small proviso

[$RANDOMLUSER]

That was spherical cows of uniform density - at STP.

Correlation is not Causation

[nameendingwith]

Perhaps it is north because the cows are pointing in that direction...

Re:Correlation is not Causation

[tourvil]

So now we've got true north, magnetic north, and bovine north?

Re:How about a simpler explanation?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

A simple experiment could be devised to verify this hypothesis with a shade and a giant mirror.

Visions of Wile E. Coyote leap to mind...

Re:Time-averaged sunlight

[Kingrames]

Perhaps they are showing reverence to the almighty invisible polar cow.

I hear he's where 2% milk comes from.

I propose a new Game Show

[spun]

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.

Re:I propose a new Game Show

[halcyon1234]

Oh, I'll play!

My theory is that Google Earth does take good pictures of cows. The resolution isn't good in rural areas where cows normally reside, and it isn't economically feasible to take high-res photos of every single farm. So what they did instead was invested a bunch of money taking one really, really accurate cow picture. Then they did a global search and replace, replacing all the fuzzy cows with their one HD Cow. That cow happened to be facing north-- and thus, all cows seem to be facing north

For the lightning round, I'll suggest they only looked at one herd of cows, and since cows are herd animals, they were all pointing the same direction.

Re:I propose a new Game Show

[Paradise Pete]

You're right. People should never think critically and try to find other, simpler explanations for a supposed phenomenon, not as long as it comes from a scientist, of course.

Critical thinking is good, of course, but what usually happens here is that people think for about ten seconds, come up with something obvious, and just assume that the researchers who've been working on for months and sometimes years somehow never thought of it. Like this guy, for one example.

Busy schedule

[Anonymous Coward]

when eating or resting

As distinct from all the other varied activities cows fill their day with.

Thanks, Slashdot!

[eln]

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!

Re:Thanks, Slashdot!

[77Punker]

The picture is actually related to the article, since the cow has a map of Earth on her side, with North at her top!

better article

[800DeadCCs]

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

Where does Gary Larson Live?

[filesiteguy]

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.

Re:Subject Requires More Study IMO

[Nymz]

I'm not sure this subject warrants any study at all...

Funny, but you never know, a lot of discovers come from looking into non-obvious places.

TV Satellite dishes point south

[Jim Buzbee]

TV Satellite dishes point south - So when I'm lost in the wilderness, that's what I look for.

Re:Time-averaged sunlight

[krgallagher]

I used to fish a lot as a kid. I come from a rural area and my uncle taught me to fish. We would always watch the cattle on the way to the lake to see if they were eating or lying around. As my uncle used to say, "If the cows are eating the fish will be too."

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.

But a lot of cows have a magnet in their stomach!

[Furan]

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.

Re:Time-averaged sunlight

[CrazedWalrus]

"He"? Dude, I'm never drinking 2% milk again. *shudder*

Re:Time-averaged sunlight

[tbird20d]

The prevailing winds in this area tend to be from the north during the winter and the south during the winter.

Which must be confusing for the cows...

ASCII Cows

[jrivar59]

Never before has the slashdot junk character filter been so unfortunate.

Moo.

Now you're getting silly

[rumblin'rabbit]

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.

Re:Huh

[Locke2005]

They're heisencows... observing them changes the direction they are pointing.

Not correct.

[M0b1u5]

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.