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

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that maybe they had a preference based on light direction and optimizing visibility, because they're prey animals and they evolved to be able to see all around themselves while they eat.

I wonder if they would find that human sunbathers have a preference for orienting themselves in a certain direction with respect to the sun.

Of course, one way to check, as long as there isn't too much uncertainty in the measurements, is to see whether they line up more with the local magnetic anomaly and point themselves along lines of magnetic north and south, or whether there's variation with latitude and they're aligning themselves with celestial or ecliptic north and south.

Two out of three cows doesn't seem like a very concrete finding, though.

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

I suspect that any directional preference human sunbathers might have is probably not significant enough to manifest itself in the face of other factors. Mainly I'm thinking here of the tendency to align relative to the local environment first - parallel or perpendicular to the beach, edge of the pool, shape of the yard or porch, etc.

Alas, there's probably not a large enough population of people who sunbathe in the middle of large open areas to get good statistics :)