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Animal Behaviour Specialists Map Out the Social Networks of Cows
KentuckyFC writes In a classic The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, a group of cows stand on two legs chatting by the side of a road when a lookout shouts "car". The cows immediately drop to a four-legged stance as the car passes by and return to their usual position and continue chatting when it has gone. Now a team of animal behavior specialists have discovered that the social lives of cattle are more complex than biologists had ever imagined (although not quite into Larson territory). These guys attached RFID tags to 70 Holstein-Fresian calves kept in three pens. They then monitored the position of each cow for a week to see which other animals they tended to have contact with. This allowed them to construct the social network for the cows with unprecedented detail. It turns out these social networks have many of the properties of human social networks. Cows have preferred partners who they tend to spend more time with and 60 per cent of their contacts occur during feeding which amounts to only 6 per cent of their time. The work has important applications. It should help biologists more accurately model how disease spreads through herds of cattle and therefore better understand how to tackle epidemics.
I object to the idea that humans are anything like cows. In fact, we're more like sheep, which are easier to herd, hairier, and generally taste worse than beef does.
I see an IPO on the horizon..
Coming from a ranching family, this is old news. In those circles, its common knowledge that cows have 'buddies' who they spend most of their time with. It actually becomes useful to the rancher to be aware of such things. First, most cattle are tagged with an ear tag with a number to aid in logging sickness, vaccinations, pregnancy etc. Now, because cattle have "Friends" My dad has pointed out times where he realized that when he saw cow #1, it was always with cow #2. If he saw either cow #2 or cow #1 alone, it was a likely indicator that something was wrong with the other cow, as it was unable to keep up with its friend. Things like this have been understood and useful to the people who deal with livestock, probably since the dawn if domestication.
So this is the next frontier in social networking? Farmville is so human, the next killer app is cow clicker.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Cows have best friends.
Summation 2
I realize that this is likely a rhetorical question, but the answer would be to have a lot of offspring. Typically, the higher the cost to have offspring, the more care will be given to said offspring.
Also, I don't see what the connection is between emotions and eating meat. Sentience doesn't magically make something taste bad. Adult humans allegedly taste more or less like pork.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Not all animal species care for their young. Some species of sea turtles, for example, bury their eggs and then leave. The eggs hatch, the turtles crawl to the sea, and begin their life. The parents aren't around at all. Thanks to our species' typical behavior (parents raising their children) we can sometimes think this is the only way it can be, but there are many different parenting models in the animal kingdom.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
How do they know when it's going to rain?
They always lie down before it rains... are the cows hooked in to NOAA? Or, is that where AccuWeather gets that "probability of precipitation" number?
...is what the ad revenue looks like on RuminantBook.
If you've ever spent any time with a head of cows, this would be pretty obvious.
They are countless examples of "pretty obvious" things that turned out not to be true.
Your experience, for example, could be down to confirmation bias, for all any outsider might know.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Also quantifying said obvious thing can make it much more useful.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Which is why I suggest you question a number of people who are experienced with cattle and not take my word for it.
Then I'm just taking x number of peoples' words for it instead of just one.
If you are careful about how you ask your questions, I'm sure you can avoid any problems with confirmation bias...
That sounds harder - and is certainly more subjective - than tagging up 70 cows and crunching the numbers with a computer.
"60 per cent of their contacts occur during feeding which amounts to only 6 per cent of their time."
I'm not sure you'd have got very close to uncovering those numbers no matter how many careful questions you asked of how many farmers.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's not surprising that herds of cows have a social structure. They're herd animals. It may be hard to see in a feeding pen situation without this kind of tracking, but when they have a lot of room to move around, groups form. It's a bit harder to see this in a group of uniformly bred dairy cattle, though.
Horse herd social structure is well understood. There are buddies, little groups, and an overall hierarchy. If you want to see the hierarchy, set out food buckets, one at a time, and see who eats first. The order will usually be the same each time you do this.
Even chickens have a "pecking order".