I saw this article in the newspaper and again here.
Because it's a news article and not the actual research, I know I have to take what's written there with a grain of salt, but from what I read, I gotta know...WTF have they been smoking?
I mean, maybe they're right and, like birds and other migratory animals, cattle have a developed sense of the magnetic poles of the Earth and align themselves along it. But did it occur to any of the researching geniuses that when the cattle are aligned somewhere along a north-south directional axis, that they might be doing so to keep the sun at their sides?
I mean, please!
We already know (or have guessed) that many of the different types of dinosaurs had specific body structures (e.g. fins, plates, etc.) that allowed them to either capture sunlight or to otherwise help them control their body heat. We have examples today of lizards with similar heat-oriented structures. So it's not a stretch to say that animals might orient themselves in relation to the sun for heat-related purposes, either for more efficient warmth or cooling.
Of course, cattle aren't cold-blooded or lizards, but doesn't it seem like a fairly Occam's Razor-type of explanation to suggest that cattle might prefer the sunlight on their sides as it arcs over them? Especially in a type of animal that has been bred and re-bred in its long years of domestication to the point where they're largely sedentary beasties, who spend their days basically standing and eating?
Still, maybe they considered all that in their research. They *did* consider (and exclude) wind as a possibility...maybe the articles simply left out the possibility that the sun might have something to do with why cattle tend to stand facing north or south.
.
I hope so. Because folks are going to look awfully silly, trying to float a cow in water to see if its body spins to the north... |
