Awesome Animal Fact - Aligned Cows

Did you know cows often face north or south while grazing? I didn’t realize this until I read a National Geographic article about it recently. Scientists have limitless curiosity, and a team recently examined thousands of Google Earth satellite images. They realized something humans had heretofore never really noticed on a large scale. Grazing and resting cows often line their bodies up along the Earth’s magnetic poles. Not always, of course, but enough to establish a general pattern. Grazing and resting cows usually face north or south. Why? How? This pattern happens on all six of the cow-inhabitable continents, and it’s consistent regardless of the terrain or other factors like wind or the angle of the sun. (disclaimer: this is not a universally accepted phenomenon—some scientists suggest more data needs to be collected before it is conclusive).

As it turns out, nobody really knows why cows do this. Some animals, particularly birds, bees, and fish, have an internal compass, but this is the first evidence of an internal compass in a large mammal. Interestingly, the closer the cows are to the north or south poles, the less accurate they are with their orientation. Apparently, their internal compass works better the nearer they are to the equator.

Some experts suggest this is somehow related to navigation. Maybe, in the distant past, cow ancestors used this compass to migrate, or to find their way home every day after grazing over a large area of land. Other experts suggest it is some kind of strategy for avoiding predators, perhaps allowing the cows to keep themselves spatially oriented in herds (kind of like fish schooling behavior). I wonder what happens to cows if they can’t orient themselves north and south, such as in some feedlots. Does this stress the cows and make them less healthy?

I am going to add my own hypothesis (as silly as it might be) to this unsolved mystery. I’m not a cow expert, but I get the impression cows like routine, and they like uniformity. Maybe, just maybe, they orient themselves so that they are always doing something familiar, like they did yesterday and the day before. So, they orient themselves to be just like all the other cows in their herd. Maybe cows feel comfortable being just like all the other cows. Individuality does not seem to be a thing with cows.

Photo Credits:
- Cows resting - DepositPhotos