Curious behaviour: Cows are added to the long list of species that have the innate ability to orientate themselves based on the Earth's magnetic field. Experts are, as yet, at a loss to explain the the behaviour though.
Credit: iStockphoto
WASHINGTON DC: Wondering which way is north? You might want to look at grazing cows.
European scientists who studied satellite images of cows and deer around the world have discovered that these animals tend to align themselves with Earth's north-south magnetic fields while they graze or rest.
While birds, turtles and salmon are known to use magnetic guidance to migrate, cattle were not previously known to possess an inner compass, says a paper detailing the discovery in the U.S. journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
Compass sense
Farmers already knew that cattle stand perpendicular to the Sun to heat up their bodies on cold, sunny days, or stand parallel to the wind during winter days with particularly strong winds, the scientists noted.
But the farming know-how had not provided answers to the common alignment of cattle during days with optimal weather, the scientists said.
"Amazingly, this ubiquitous phenomenon does not seem to have been noticed by herdsmen, ranchers, or hunters," said the study, co-written by Sabine Begall of Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen.
"Because wind and light conditions could be excluded as a common denominator determining the body axis orientation, magnetic alignment is the most parsimonious explanation," write the authors.
The scientists used Google Earth software to study the alignment of 8,510 cows in 308 pastures around the world and 2,974 red and roe deer in 241 locations in the Czech Republic.
magnetics? Gravity?
This could explain níggers too!