Holy Cow!
Posted by lordpinoy on August 26, 2008
If ever you find yourself lost and directionally challenged, you might want to ask the nearby cow.
A recent study by Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen, discovered that cattle from Britain, Ireland, India, and USA, tended to face north and align themselves with the North-South Axis. Ruling out factors such as wind direction and sunlight due to the huge variations (in the data, obtained from Google Earth images), the study concludes that the magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor to affect the direction cattles are facing.
It is well known that certain animals use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate, especially those species that tend to migrate.
Sources:
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/08/26/1514226.shtml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2623809/Cows-point-north-thanks-to-in-built-compasses.html
