No Way. Cows Automatically Point North? I Call Bullsh …

August 27, 2008 at 3:19 pm PT

Holy cow. … Cattle grazing or at rest tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction–just like a compass needle. This according to European researchers who scrutinized Google Earth (GOOG) photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds around the world. Plotted onto a compass, the animals’ positions were generally within five degrees of magnetic north or south. “The magnetic field is the only common and most likely factor responsible for the observed alignment,” the researchers wrote in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. “Our analysis … clearly provides the crucial proof in favor of the Earth’s magnetic field being the responsive cue.”

An interesting observation, especially since cows’ … animal magnetism has been chalked up to wind and the angle of the sun for hundreds of years.

Tagged with: cattle, compass, cow, Google Earth, John Paczkowski, magnetic field, National Academy of Sciences, researcher

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Lonnie Hansen

Unfortunately, I grew up around cattle. Cattle eat all kinds of things. They often eat wire, nails, scrap metal and other forms of metal that is not good for them (obviously.) Because of this, they created a strong magnet in the shape of a cylinder. They are about three inches long and one half of an inch wide. You force the cow to swallow this magnet and theoretically all the metal sticks to it and eventually makes its way out of the cow (youch!) I wonder if these cattle magnets have anything to do with this phenomenon.