Sunday, August 31, 2008

HOLY MAGNETIC COW!

The following story has been making news recently. To get the full story, go to the BBC News Website.


Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?

Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction.

Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

In the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say the Earth's magnetic fields may influence the behaviour of these animals.

The Earth can be viewed as a huge magnet, with magnetic north and south situated close to the geographical poles.

Many species - including birds and salmon - are known to use the Earth's magnetic fields in migration, rather like a natural GPS.

The researchers surveyed Google Earth images of 8,510 grazing and resting cattle in 308 pasture plains across the globe.

"Sometimes it took hours and hours to find some pictures with good resolution," said Dr Begall.

The scientists were unable to distinguish between the head and rear of the cattle, but could tell that the animals tended to face either north or south.

Their study ruled out the possibility that the Sun position or wind direction were major influences on the orientation of the cattle.

2 comments:

Unknown August 31, 2008 at 8:58 PM  

wouldnt that be frusterating... if you could only move north or south.... like... if you make a wrong turn... you got a whole lot of walking to do again....


and as for these scientists, don't they have anything better to do rather than taking pictures of cows???

Taimur H. Khan August 31, 2008 at 9:02 PM  

HAHAHAHA

Ur funny.

First, the cows only STOOD north-south. And I just realized I took your joke too seriously by answering like that. Wow I am a party-pooper.

Second, the scientist didn't take pictures. They just took the pictures already on GoogleMaps/Earth.
I dont know how they would get funding to take pictures of cattle standing.

Loves the comments though! Keep 'em coming!

Taimz

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