Most cattle that were grazing or resting tended to align their bodies in a north-south direction, a team of German and Czech researchers reports in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
(Read the rest here. Thanks, Cindy.)
I wonder if this study concerned only cows (i.e. females) or if it included bulls. The only time I’ve ever seen a bull is when I was chased by one many years ago in the Lake District (in England). Bastard. I’ve also been chased by a ram. Bastard. And dogs. Bastards.
I think most animals have a notion of direction. So it doesn’t surprise me that they’d be able to tell north from south. For me the more interesting question is, why do they choose to align along a particular axis? And (because everything for me is currently related to Hild) does this have any connection with the changing mores of human burial over the centuries? (‘Native’ British burial alignment was often north-south. After conversion to Christianity, many Anglo-Saxons burials were East-West. I haven’t the faintest idea why.)
Anyway, the article about cows caught my eye. I love to see behaviour explained via biology. I’ve just got Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others, by Marco Iacoboni, and am looking forward to the publication of Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes: Bodies, Behavior, and Brains–The Science Behind Sex, Love, and Attraction, by Jena Pincott, in a few weeks. I just hope they’re both reasonably well written. I get so very critical (picky picky picky, and irritable) when I’m working hard.
Oh, and I just saw this article in the New Scientist; it seems elephants know a lot, too:
Add elephants to the growing menagerie of animals that can count.
An Asian elephant named Ashya beat this reporter at a devilishly simple addition problem. When a trainer dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples in the first and five more in the second, the pachyderm recognised that three plus four is greater than one plus five, and snacked on the seven apples. (In my defence, I watched the video in a noisy and crowded auditorium.)
Nicola Griffith 
Heh. When I was a little kid, I would try to get myself lost in our 5 acres, then try to find my way out again. I got into the habit of looking for the sun–no matter what season it is, the sun’s midpoint (whether it be higher or lower in the sky) will always be noon. So I checked to see if the sun was to the right or left of middle and then deduced S, W, E, and N from that. I thought about why cows might align themselves N-S, and laughed. It’s probably as simple as them not wanting to wake up with the sun in their faces (if they slept E-W). They’re really quite lazy.
Cattle includes cows and bulls, both. Regarding burial, it’s the same reason that cathedrals are built, usually, with the main doors at east and west; Christ, like the sun, rose. There’s lots of medieval folklore as well about hell being in the North.
Maybe the cows are like lizards, and just orient themselves to maximize sun exposure. But the next time I am wandering about and find myself suddenly lost in a cow pasture, I will be sure to take note of this finding. :)
In noticed in the article they mention the weather factor for the cattle. Apparently they ruled it out by noticing sun direction and shadows. That’s interesting stuff they are postulating about the magnetic field. It will be interesting to see if they can ever correlate any of that to humans.I am always interested in the biology/behavior thing myself. I almost got that book, and I probable still will. Instead I got that other book (someone kind of linked to from here) – The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. I haven’t read much of it yet, but it’s pretty interesting.Let us know what you think of the Iacoboni book.
Meandering,that’s the path a cow follows, so I vote, just to get in practice, for lazy, too.I grew up in the south on a farm. Midday was lunch and then siesta time. We boys and girls all learned to read the sky since it was also a great time to play while the adults splept for an hour.Speaking of books, and if you want to start looking at the night time stars to tell the time at night too, there’s a book I liked called Stikky Night Skies by Lawrence Holt. I learned 6 constellations, 4 stars, a Planet, a galaxy, and how to navigate at night in one hour of study. Great visual teaching approach. Oh and I think they are often looking for ideas and writers to expand the series.
janine, wow, I’m so very jealous of you growing up on 5 acres. It must have been wonderful.lisa, is that pre-‘Viking’ folklore, or post?jill, no, nothing to do with sun exposure; the closer the cows came to strong magnetic fields, the more closely aligned they became with true north, as opposed to geographic north.jennifer, I’ll let you know about the book.rhbee, that book sounds cool. I’ll check it out, thank you.
<>Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others<> just arrived in the mail. I’ll start reading it on the bus today. It looks very promising.
Oh, good. Let me know what you think. I enjoyed the first 5 pages but had to set it aside. I’m swamped.
Nicola, the book is okay. I kept thinking that it was a simplified take on the Holographic Universe Paradigm, though. And applied only to human cognition and interaction. Which I guess is great in a way. It’s focused. It’s interesting. And focused.I’m more drawn to the Holographic Universe thing, since it reaches out to, well, the entire universe–from quantum physics to human perception. And it’s so beautifully simple, too. Let’s see if I can get you interested in it.Check out < HREF="http://science.howstuffworks.com/hologram.htm" REL="nofollow">how holograms work.<> A number of scientists from across all disciplines have been uncovering stuff that suggests reality and our brains function in ways that could be compared to holograms. The Wikipedia entry on the < HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_model" REL="nofollow">Holonomic Brain Model<> gives a few names worth checking out: DeValois (visual cortex), David Bohm (quantum physics), Karl Pribram (neuroscience), <>et al<>.How I understand their model is more or less like this: Our brain replicates (through the interference pattern created by ripples of interaction between neurons) what happens outside. The brain is a mini-model of the big hologram of reality, it perceives by mirroring. And every part contains the whole. That is how we store unbelievable amounts of information and are able to make associations. But back to the mirroring part of holograms. If we see a dancer outside, the same interference patterns are being generated within our brain. Action is the opposite: our body tries to modify the variables in the external hologram (reality) until the pattern matches the one we are thinking, such as willing our hand to reach out for a glass of water. It exists first as intention (internal hologram) and is replicated into action. The clearer our internal hologram, the more efficient our action becomes if we chose to execute them. Think about biofeedback, or how elite athletes are encouraged to go over the motions in their minds to increase performance, etc. Holograms are successfully used in image-recognition systems, also in a form of 3D perception of sound… Oh, so many interesting applications that I could go on. But I won’t. To end this enthusiastic rambling, I’ll just say that it’s too bad that the people who’ve paid more attention to the Holographic Universe Paradigm are the mystic type. As if it needed any more hokey-pokey attached to it other than the name. *sigh* The hard-core Physics community instead embraced String Theory, which I think is ridiculously convoluted and has been impossible to prove or even find the slightest application for in over a decade. At least < HREF="http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/pcttbook/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&sid=11&id=1133681&pid=1172" REL="nofollow">Lee Smolin<> agrees with me on what <>The Trouble With Physics<> may be.
okay, I won’t rush on that book then.
Uh-oh. I made is sound that unappealing, eh?I stared at the ceiling this morning, beditating about the associative properties of holograms. I’ll have to blog about that. It’s brilliant and fascinating (at least to this karina). I believe that’s another way in which the holographic model goes way beyond the mirror neuron thing. I’ll grant that those Italians did come up with a very catchy name. Mirror neurons. Cool. And they infiltrated the mainstream. That’s usually a good and commendable thing. People need to read more stuff on neuroscience.