Stories tagged cows
Cow pointing north: Maybe THIS is why you always see animals on weather vanes
Courtesy Leo ReynoldsResearchers in Germany used Google Earth to examine hundreds of aerial images of cattle herds at rest and found that 2 out of 3 cows tended to align their bodies north-south. It seems that no one has really ever noticed this before, which is a little shocking. On the other hand it's nice to know that science still has some basic observations left to be made.
At first I was a bit skeptical. As a kid I'd heard that you could tell if it was going to rain depending on whether cows were laying down or not, which is a silly tale for sure...so maybe this was a similar situation? How would cows sense the Earth's magnetic field anyways? Actually, lots of animals can sense the earth's magnetic field:
- Bacteria - Small strings of magnetite in bacteria, called magnetosomes, have actually been shown to rotate to align with the Earth's magnetic field.
- Birds - One group of researchers found chemicals called cryptochromes in the eyes of some birds. These chemicals change in the presence of a magnetic field and may help the birds see the north-south axis as they fly.
- Sharks - Sharks have receptors in their brains that help them perceive the magnetic field. When sharks swim in tanks they normally swim around the edges, but move randomly when the normal magnetic field is disturbed in some fashion.
Most of this research is still under-way and new discoveries may give us different explanations about how animals sense the Earth's magnetic field. Yet, it is certain that all varieties of creatures, cows included, seem to be able to sense the Earth's weak yet significant magnetic field.
What about you? Can you feel North?
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Running on empty: photo by corypina on flickr.comCiting concern over Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or Mad Cow, disease spreading from northern Europe, the U.S. has imposed a blanket ban on all sperm imports from countries exposed to the disease. "We still have a little bit left, but not much," said Claus Rodgaard, manager of a Danish-based sperm bank with offices in the U.S.
Some blame faulty policy for the shortage. There is no evidence that Mad Cow disease can be transmitted by sperm, but government authorities insist on maintaining the ban.
The shortage has only highlighted our country’s already much-discussed reliance on foreign sperm. Scientists are hard at work developing a domestically produced alternative, but even the most optimistic estimates place the release of such a substitute decades into the future. A handful of prominent politicians have proposed looking to Alaska, which is reputed to have significant sperm reserves, although some argue that the process of tapping this source would place too much of a strain on the local wildlife.
For the time being, officials are urging the public to adopt many of the same conservation measures developed during the sperm shortage of the 1970s, and the national Ad Council is already planning a relaunch of its controversial “Got Gametes?” campaign.
Excuse me: British scientists are looking for less gassy diet options for cows to reduce their burps. Cows belch 25 to 50 gallons of methane a day, which contributes to global warming. (flickr photo courtesy of Denmar)Don’t you just hate it when cows burp?
Scientists working on global warming and climate change hate it just as much as we do and are doing something about it. They’re working on developing new diets for cows that will cut back on their burps and the amount of methane they’re expelling into the atmosphere.
The average cow belches out 25 to 50 gallons of methane each day. Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to the growing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that fuel global warming.
So what’s a polite, green-friendly cow to eat these days and reduce global warming? Scientists in Great Britain are proposing simpler digestibles like legumes – such as clover and alfalfa – could reduce cows’ belching significantly. The researchers also say that more grasses could be bred that would be easier for cows to process.
There’s good news for the very impolite cows. The scientists have also determined that methane is released into the air through cow burps, not the gas emissions they make from the other end of their body. They don’t have to strike baked beans from their diet!
British scientists are looking for less gassy diet options for cows to reduce their burps. Cows belch 25 to 50 gallons of methane a day, which contributes to global warming. (flikr photo courtesy of Denmar)
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The UN estimates that cows and other livestock are responsible for 18% of the global warming effect. Save the planet, eat a cow?
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