Google Earth and animal magnetism

[dianeduane]

In today’s “moos:“

German scientists using satellite images posted online by the Google Earth software program have observed something that has escaped the notice of farmers, herders and hunters for thousands of years: Cattle grazing or at rest tend to orient their bodies in a north-south direction just like a compass needle.

Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen and their colleagues found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north.

The resolution of the images was not sufficient to tell which ends of the cows were pointing north, however. Asked if he had ever observed such behavior in cows, dairy farmer Rob Fletcher of Tulare said, “Absolutely not.” But, he added, “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like that.”

Tags: cows, magnetic, field, Earth, cattle, grazing, Duisberg, Essen, north, south

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, given that the resolution wasn't good enough to tell what end was which, my guess is that their criteria for determining the direction the cow is aligned isn't very precise. Say it's 30 degrees either side of North-South, that's 120 degrees out of 360 degrees, so 33% of the possible directions. So they're seeing about twice as many cows as they should aligned NS - assuming that it's pure chance. But when you take into account things like maximizing sunlight as someone else pointed out, facing into the wind to minimise cooling, the direction from which the cows expect to see the farmer deliver the next tractor-load of oil cake, etc. it probably isn't that rand om.

[bar-gamer.livejournal.com]

With Google Earth, frequently you get a top-down view of something. Just because you can't which end has the horns doesn't mean you can't see the orientation of the body, especially since you have that compass over there in the corner.