Sea pigs do the same thing. I don’t know how migratory they are, but surely they’re working with a less sophisticated nervous system, which makes it all the more eerie.
It also works with chickens. (Or so my source says.)
Indeed. As a matter of fact, pretty much all of the “geomagnetic alignment in animals” papers have come from the same small research group. And a lot of their citations come from each other.
That doesn’t necessarily make the results suspect, but I’d like to know that somebody else has gotten similar results, especially as others have had troubles replicating the results elsewhere.
They’re homoosexual.
That would result in a random alignment relative to magnetic poles, not the results that were reported.
Unless you were collecting data in a systematic fashion, such observations are worthless.
I don’t know if the research results reported will hold up in the long run, but these kinds of observations hardly refute them.
Didn’t you ever do that thing where a group of people all stare at the ceiling or something, and then when someone comes in the room, they end up looking up too?
Same thing. The cows are trolling us… (“Hey, Bessie! Lets all face the same way, and see how much time Farmer John wastes trying to figure out why!”). I mean, you’re a cow, what else do you do for lulz?
But seriously, my two cents… facing into the wind seems to me the most logical explanation. Would account for why it only happens sometimes (non windy days doesn’t matter), plus maybe just a little confirmation bias (it doesn’t happen as often as you think it happens).
I have no idea what you are talking about. I am refuting the facing into the wind theory because I have seen cows aligned when there is no wind. I’m not the least interested in an internet blurb and magnetic fields. So your statement hardly refutes mine.
How so?
I have a photo of a herd of Hawaiian (Big Island) cows, all facing me. And they were facing that direction before I was there; that’s why I stopped and took the picture.
Cow orientation doesn’t take long. Being a cow is a pretty simple job; they’re ready to take on the fully responsibility very quickly.
cows are a social domesticated animal. they are used to acting and moving together to get to food and for udder/utter relief.
Seriously?
You really can’t imagine knowing which way north is won’t help you find your way about?
When cows jump over the moon, does the whole herd commonly do so together?
I learned in college chemistry that water molecules are polar, and (slightly) attracted to magnets. Cows are largely made of water, so I’d expect them to be polarized. Given their lunartropic habit of jumping over moons, together with their herd instincts, it’s not surprising that, like moths, they tend to spiral into candle flames en masse and become roast beef. That is why we’ve domesticated them and make a major food source of them.
Does it matter if they know which way is north, or if instead they know which way is east and which way is west? It’s kind of easy to know which way is east or west.
No it isn’t. The magnetic field is always there regardless if the sun is visible or not, cloudy or clear, day or night. To know which way is east you have to see which direction the sun rose (which might not be possible if it were cloudy), and you also have to remember it (which could be a problem for an animal as dumb as a cow). And if you move it won’t be in the same position relative to any landmark. None of this is true of a magnetic field.
Animals do use celestial cues for navigation, but using them is much more complex a task than using a magnetic field (if you can detect one).
Based on your comment they aren’t migratory, no I don’t see how important knowing where north is. It’s not like they are headed for South America. Don’t they just gradually move to move where there is more food as the seasons change?
But I don’t know about cows and apparently you do so I asked.
John Steinbeck might have had the right idea in Cannery Row:
Senegoid, I’m pretty sure that whole post was a joke, but in case it’s not, or in case anyone else didn’t figure it out, water is electrically polarized, not magnetically. Not only is water not attracted to a magnet, it’s actually repelled (though much more weakly than iron is attracted-- You’d need a pretty strong magnet to notice it).
Also, a bunch of water is not spontaneously polarized - the dipoles are randomly arranged.