# Ever wonder why a group of cows align themselves with one another?



## Lynne (Aug 26, 2008)

Maybe this question hasn't plagued you since the age of 5 like it has me.  But I've always wondered why a herd of cows will face the same direction.  Horses often do, too.  I can't say I've ever seen cats or chickens do so.

Apparently, cows have a magnetic compass.  They align themselves with the earth's north-south magnetic poles.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080826/ts_afp/usscienceanimal;_ylt=AoJqNBQE5LrumIVwHJklYRCGOrgF

Now, aren't you smarter than before?


----------



## jkembry (Aug 26, 2008)

Heard this on the radio this morning...I think it is kinda cool.  I also believe there are many similar things in nature that we are just now learning.


----------



## Lynne (Aug 26, 2008)

jkembry said:


> Heard this on the radio this morning...I think it is kinda cool. I also believe there are many similar things in nature that we are just now learning.


 It really is interesting.  I'd like to know how dogs find their way home when they have been stranded/lost miles away.


----------



## arnisador (Aug 26, 2008)

Heh, neat!


----------



## shesulsa (Aug 26, 2008)

I've been driving past cattle pastures to get to class for years and have also noticed they will gather when a storm is on the way.  Sometimes in a particular corner of the pasture, sometimes in other places.  It's fascinating.


----------



## CoryKS (Aug 26, 2008)

See, _this_ is why I eat beef.  These things are creepy and can't be trusted.


----------



## Lynne (Aug 26, 2008)

CoryKS said:


> See, _this_ is why I eat beef. These things are creepy and can't be trusted.


 This is what Mr. Cow thinks about your statement (his expression):

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...cows&um=1&hl=en&rlz=1T4DKUS_enUS211US211&sa=N

That is creepy.


----------



## MA-Caver (Aug 26, 2008)

I think I could've lived the rest of my life not realizing that I didn't know this ... and died a happy man.


----------



## Lynne (Aug 26, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> I think I could've lived the rest of my life not realizing that I didn't know this ... and died a happy man.


 Are you sure?!


----------



## MA-Caver (Aug 26, 2008)

Lynne said:


> Are you sure?!


Hmm... lemme think... 







yep. :wink2:


----------



## Lynne (Aug 26, 2008)

Now I have to wonder about the cows who do not face the same direction as the rest of the herd.  Is that because they are rebels, revolutionaries, or just let their nose lead them to another grassy patch?


----------



## MA-Caver (Aug 26, 2008)

Lynne said:


> Now I have to wonder about the cows who do not face the same direction as the rest of the herd.  Is that because they are rebels, revolutionaries, or just let their nose lead them to another grassy patch?


Probably it's because they ate a small piece of broken barbed wire that screwed up their magnetic properties. :idunno:


----------



## Lynne (Aug 26, 2008)

MA-Caver said:


> Probably it's because they ate a small piece of broken barbed wire that screwed up their magnetic properties. :idunno:


 Of course!


----------



## shesulsa (Aug 26, 2008)

I thought it was for better cell phone reception? :idunno:


----------



## Jade Tigress (Aug 26, 2008)

Lynne said:


> It really is interesting.  I'd like to know how dogs find their way home when they have been stranded/lost miles away.



I find it really interesting too and I've always wondered about the dogs who travel ungodly miles to find their lost families.



CoryKS said:


> See, _this_ is why I eat beef.  These things are creepy and can't be trusted.



:lfao:



Lynne said:


> Now I have to wonder about the cows who do not face the same direction as the rest of the herd.  Is that because they are rebels, revolutionaries, or just let their nose lead them to another grassy patch?



Ummmm....those are the *slow* cows.


----------



## donna (Aug 26, 2008)

I always thought they just turned their bums to the wind to keep warm!!


----------



## Ninjamom (Aug 26, 2008)

So, if I dunk my Oreo cookie in a glass of milk from a magnetic cow, will it rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?


----------



## Lynne (Aug 27, 2008)

Ninjamom said:


> So, if I dunk my Oreo cookie in a glass of milk from a magnetic cow, will it rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?


 If it's raw unpastuerized milk, the oreo cookie will rotate clockwise.  If you are using processed, homogenzied, pasteurized milk, the cookie will sink.


----------



## Brian R. VanCise (Aug 27, 2008)

shesulsa said:


> I've been driving past cattle pastures to get to class for years and have also noticed they will gather when a storm is on the way.  Sometimes in a particular corner of the pasture, sometimes in other places.  It's fascinating.



I saw this the other day as a rain storm approached the cows all turned to face away from it.  Very interesting.


----------



## jkembry (Aug 27, 2008)

Brian R. VanCise said:


> I saw this the other day as a rain storm approached the cows all turned to face away from it.  Very interesting.



They don't like water in their faces.


----------



## Brian R. VanCise (Aug 27, 2008)

jkembry said:


> They don't like water in their faces.



Absolutely!  It was really neat to watch them do it though.


----------



## jkembry (Aug 27, 2008)

Has anyone noticed the unique alignment of
people grazing at fast-food establishments. People always line up in
front of cash registers and beverage machines - could this be related to the
magnetism generated by these machines.


----------



## Tez3 (Aug 27, 2008)

What about the horses and cows who stand nose to tail to keep the flies away?


----------



## teekin (Aug 29, 2008)

Those are the smart ones. The Lead Cows, if you will. The fanning from the other cows tail not only keeps flies off but cools the larger and overheating brain of His Moogesty. He knows what's on the menu tonight, his older brother Herbert! and he wants Payback! Be Afraid, be very Afraid.-vampfeed-
Lori M


----------



## Tez3 (Aug 29, 2008)

Grendel308 said:


> Those are the smart ones. The Lead Cows, if you will. The fanning from the other cows tail not only keeps flies off but cools the larger and overheating brain of His Moogesty. He knows what's on the menu tonight, his older brother Herbert! and he wants Payback! Be Afraid, be very Afraid.-vampfeed-
> Lori M


 
:lol:


----------



## Ninjamom (Aug 31, 2008)

Ninjamom said:


> So, if I dunk my Oreo cookie in a glass of milk from a magnetic cow, will it rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?


 


Lynne said:


> If it's raw unpastuerized milk, the oreo cookie will rotate clockwise. If you are using processed, homogenzied, pasteurized milk, the cookie will sink.


 
I did more research on this and found the Oreo's rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and clockwise south of teh Equator.   Sorry about my pervious error.


----------



## Tez3 (Aug 31, 2008)

Ninjamom said:


> I did more research on this and found the Oreo's rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and clockwise south of teh Equator. Sorry about my pervious error.


 

Oreos have just been introduced here complete with tv ads telling us how to eat them! Seems you split them. lick the white bits off and dunk the hard bits in milk?
I don't think they'll catch on as we all like to dunk our chocolate digestives in our tea!


----------



## CoryKS (Aug 31, 2008)

Tez3 said:


> Oreos have just been introduced here complete with tv ads telling us how to eat them! Seems you split them. lick the white bits off and dunk the hard bits in milk?
> I don't think they'll catch on as we all like to dunk our chocolate digestives in our tea!


 
Enjoy your tea while you can.  Once the cookie cartel is done with you, we shall unleash the Juan Valdez Mafia.  Resistance is futile!


----------



## theletch1 (Aug 31, 2008)

I helped a friend of mine work on a dairy farm one summer when I was about 14.  The taste of the milk before it was pumped into a truck and sent to be "processed" ruined me for milk from a store ever after.  Raw milk is great!  The stuff from a store just doesn't taste right.


----------



## Tez3 (Aug 31, 2008)

Isn't your milk UHT? that tastes horrible, our is pasteurised and tastes the same as untreated milk.


----------



## Cryozombie (Aug 31, 2008)

Did someone say Apocalypse Cow?


----------



## astrobiologist (Aug 31, 2008)

Since I'm a biologist, I figured I should probably reply to this...

Magnetoreception is the term given to the sense of magnetism.  It is most commonly associated with avian species (birds), and is attributed to the lines of migration many of these animals follow annually.  The sense of magnetism appears to be present in many marine animals as well; including many fish and turtles. 

Little is currently known about the sense of magnetoreception.  Indeed, though many scientists have claimed to have discovered organs in many animals which contain large amounts of magnetite or other iron minerals and which definitely appear to be the source of magnetoreception, neurobiologists have not yet come to understand the biophysical mechanism(s) by which these organs and the rest of the neurological system decode the geomagnetic signal...

It is truly an interesting area of study.  We humans do not have this sense.  I have actually never before heard of any mammals which have magnetoreceptive abilities.  I'm curious where you read or heard about this being discovered in cows (and if it is truly a sense in cows than it is probably so in many of their close relatives like bison, goats, sheep, deer, elk, and whales)...


----------



## Ninjamom (Aug 31, 2008)

astrobiologist said:


> ..... We humans do not have this sense. I have actually never before heard of any mammals which have magnetoreceptive abilities....


I recall having read a paper back in the 1980's about an experiment done regarding individuals' natural 'sense of direction' - 100+ college students were taken into an underground section of building and asked to navigate and/or estimate where they were underground in relation to what was above ground.  The experiment was specifically designed to eliminate other clues typically used for 'dead reckoning', like visible landmarks and the position of the sun/shadows.  The study found that the male students perfomed better in this task than the female students.  The researchers theorized this as correlating to the rates of anemia in the population, and/or the prevalance of Fe+ in the available heme molecules.  

I have searched and tried to find the article again, unsuccessfully. 

Have you heard of any similar research?  Is the heme molecule polar?


----------



## teekin (Sep 1, 2008)

Cryozombie said:


> Did someone say *Apocalypse Cow?*


*

28 Cows Later !!!-vampfeed-:lol2:
*
Lori M


----------



## astrobiologist (Sep 1, 2008)

Good questions Ninjamom,

Each heme molecule carries one iron atom.  However, even when an abundance of metalloproteins with iron containing heme come together, they still won't be very strongly effected by the geomagnetic field of the earth; the energetic reactions between the hundreds to tens of thousands of other atoms in each metalloprotein would greatly overpower any slight magnetic pull upon the one iron atom.  Also, we mammals do not bear any neurological mechanisms, as far as I know, through which magnetoreception could be possible.

Remember, I did not say that we humans lack a natural sense of direction, just a sense of magnetoreception.  Our 'sense of direction' as a lot of us call it, actually relies on several other senses.  Like I said before, we have proprioception (our ability to understand where our bodies are relative to everything else around us).  We also have our 'big five' (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch).  We can also sense large pressure changes and movement.  Taken together, with a little bit of good inductive reasoning, we can "sense our direction".

As to the difference in the male and female human "sense of direction", I know more recent studies have theorized that the reason for males generally being better with their sensing is due in large part to the behavioral evolution of our species.  Males generally are stronger and more able to handle themselves.  In a more primitive time for our species, men would hunt and gather food while women would bear children and keep to the tribe.  A hunter must learn to live from the land and must be able to find their way.  Naturally, the best hunters were better at sensing where they were and thus could lead and find more food.  These better hunters were more likely to have their choice of mates and may even have mated with several females.  The hunters who had poor senses likely had little to no chance of passing on their genes through reproduction.  So, after hundreds to thousands of generations, the males of the species had been bred for having a greater sense of direction , whereas the pressure to select for that trait had never been present for the female of the species and thus women were less likely to have a good sense of direction.


----------



## theletch1 (Sep 1, 2008)

Astro and Ninjamom... ya'll are making my head hurt.


----------



## Lynne (Sep 1, 2008)

astrobiologist said:


> Since I'm a biologist, I figured I should probably reply to this...
> 
> Magnetoreception is the term given to the sense of magnetism. It is most commonly associated with avian species (birds), and is attributed to the lines of migration many of these animals follow annually. The sense of magnetism appears to be present in many marine animals as well; including many fish and turtles.
> 
> ...


 I posted the link in my original post.  Here's the usual thing though.  The media put the spin on the article as if it were proved science.  A few days later, I'm reading another article and it appears to be a hypothesis.

Heh...cows gathering closely and pointing the same direction is probably some sort of herd instinct for protection against predators.  Maybe the ones facing a different direction are lookouts.


----------



## astrobiologist (Sep 1, 2008)

That's pretty much what my girlfriend and I were thinking.  As an astrobiologist, I've spent more time studying microorganisms, evolutionary biology, and planetary physics.  But my girlfriend, Amanda, is more into wildlife, ecology, and ecosystems.  We both were thinking it had much more to do with the herd's behavioral pattterns.  

I haven't heard of any research which has shown that magnetoreception may be possible in any mammalian species.  But, just because I haven't read it, doesn't mean it may not yet come to be.  Wow, check that out...  triple negative in one sentence.  Do I get a Darwin award or something for that.  Sounds like I'm a rapper or something


----------



## Sukerkin (Sep 1, 2008)

As *Letch* did above, I just wanted to thank the two of you for a most interesting string of posts above.

Given that it's not "magnetoreception", what other plausible ideas are there for the herds to face North?  Herding instinct brings the herd together and the odd ones facing in different directions are either 'rebels without a clue' or look-outs.  But what would cause the magnetic pole aligning behaviour?


----------



## astrobiologist (Sep 1, 2008)

Like I said before, just because I haven't heard of any proven mechanisms by which mammals may have magnetoreception doesn't mean it can't be possible.  I just read over the article from NPR about the study in question...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93956323

It does seem a little profound that such a large population (a global) study would come back with such significant results.  Not just for cows, but for deer as well.

The article mentions bats having magnetoreception.  If this is possible, than that may show that it is possible in other mammals.  It could be a very primitve sense (after all some microorganisms have magnetotaxis), or it may have just arised separately in the evolution of different types of organisms.

I just sent an emal to Dr. Hynek Burda at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany; he was the lead author of the study that they reported.  I've asked him for a little clarification on the issue.  I'm not sure if they have proposed a mechanism by which these larger mammalian organisms may be magnetoreceptive or if they have only gotten to the basis of saying that it appears that all of these animals are aligning north or south.  If Dr. Burda will be willing to share some information, than I'll gladly relay whatever I can back here.  I'm sure he has some previous research to fall back on and may even be able to get me some research articles to read.

It appears that Dr. Burda had been studying the possibility of magentoreception in mammals for some time now.  If you're interested, his information can be found here...
http://www.uni-due.de/zoologie/burda/

Anyways, a scientist is trained to say "I was wrong".  And so, in this case, I may have been very wrong.  I had not heard of magnetorecption in mammals before, but it sounds like Dr. Hynek Burda and his associates may be on to something.  I'd like to dig a little deeper here and see where the neurological-sensory connection lies with this issue.  I wonder if some mammals possess a magnetoreceptive organ or if there is an organism-wide relay system that somehow then has a mechanism for perceptive transferral.


----------



## astrobiologist (Sep 1, 2008)

Okay gang,

I've found the listing for the original article which was published in _The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, section _Ecology_.

The only problem is that the article costs 10 bucks to read.  Once I get in contact with Drs. Burda or Begall, I will see if it's worth my ten bucks or if I should wait for the few months or so it would take for the article to come off of reserve and become public domain.  I'm sure it's an impressively written article to pick-up so much talk (it's also a pretty cool topic ), but $10 is a lot of cash for me right now. 

Here's the info on the article if anyone is interested...

Sabine Begall, Jaroslav &#268;ervený, Julia Neef, Old&#345;ich Vojt&#269;ch, and Hynek Burda 
*Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer*
PNAS published ahead of print August 25, 2008, doi:10.1073/pnas.0803650105


----------



## astrobiologist (Sep 1, 2008)

btw, Here's the abastract for that article.  It seems, according to this, that they are just reporting the phenomena, but have no suggestions as to a mechanism...

-from *Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer*

We demonstrate by means of simple, noninvasive methods (analysis of satellite images, field observations, and measuring deer beds in snow) that domestic cattle (_n_ = 8,510 in 308 pastures) across the globe, and grazing and resting red and roe deer (_n_ = 2,974 at 241 localities), align their body axes in roughly a northsouth direction. Direct observations of roe deer revealed that animals orient their heads northward when grazing or resting. Amazingly, this ubiquitous phenomenon does not seem to have been noticed by herdsmen, ranchers, or hunters. Because wind and light conditions could be excluded as a common denominator determining the body axis orientation, magnetic alignment is the most parsimonious explanation. To test the hypothesis that cattle orient their body axes along the field lines of the Earth's magnetic field, we analyzed the body orientation of cattle from localities with high magnetic declination. Here, magnetic north was a better predictor than geographic north. This study reveals the magnetic alignment in large mammals based on statistically sufficient sample sizes. Our findings open horizons for the study of magnetoreception in general and are of potential significance for applied ethology (husbandry, animal welfare). They challenge neuroscientists and biophysics to explain the proximate mechanisms.


----------



## Ninjamom (Sep 1, 2008)

Sukerkin said:


> ....Given that it's not "magnetoreception", what other plausible ideas are there for the herds to face North?


_(Ninjamom raises one hand and begins shouting wildly...)_ Oo!  Oo!  Pick me!!  I Know!!!! 

Cows allign facing north because millions of years of evolution have taught them that if they face any other direction, the sun will get in their eyes.   Watch:  I'll bet a dime-to-a-dollar that cows in the Southern Hemisphere face SOUTH!


----------



## Sukerkin (Sep 1, 2008)

.  Stranger things have turned out to be true .


----------

