Cows and deer head north, literally

by William Atkins

Thursday, 28 August 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! German and Czech researchers studied satellites images of thousands of cows and deer around the world and found most of them graze and rest in a north-south position. Could they be sensing the magnetic field of the Earth? Or, maybe they just happened to stand and sit that way? In any case, it’s a pretty mooooving study! The results of the study have been published in the Tuesday, August 26, 2008 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, under the title “Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer.” Its authors are Sabine Begall, Jaroslav Červený, Julia Neef, Oldřich Vojtčch, and Hynek Burda. The researchers, led by Drs. Burda and Begall, faculty members of the department of biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, used satellite images and field observations of deer and domestic cattle around the world. They analyzed the beds of 2,974 red and roe deer at 241 locations in the Czech Republic, and the grazing and resting of 8,510 cattle at 308 pastures around the world. The Burda-Begall team found, according to the abstract to their paper, “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.” They comment, “Because wind and light conditions could be excluded as a common denominator determining the body axis orientation, magnetic alignment is the most parsimonious explanation.” The researchers began studying cows and deer after first researching the affect that the Earth's magnetic field had on African mole-rats. Please turn to page two. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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