Animal Behaviour Specialists Map Out the Social Networks of Cows 66
KentuckyFC writes In a classic The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, a group of cows stand on two legs chatting by the side of a road when a lookout shouts "car". The cows immediately drop to a four-legged stance as the car passes by and return to their usual position and continue chatting when it has gone. Now a team of animal behavior specialists have discovered that the social lives of cattle are more complex than biologists had ever imagined (although not quite into Larson territory). These guys attached RFID tags to 70 Holstein-Fresian calves kept in three pens. They then monitored the position of each cow for a week to see which other animals they tended to have contact with. This allowed them to construct the social network for the cows with unprecedented detail. It turns out these social networks have many of the properties of human social networks. Cows have preferred partners who they tend to spend more time with and 60 per cent of their contacts occur during feeding which amounts to only 6 per cent of their time. The work has important applications. It should help biologists more accurately model how disease spreads through herds of cattle and therefore better understand how to tackle epidemics.
Re:Animals have feelings and intelligence shocker. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not all animal species care for their young. Some species of sea turtles, for example, bury their eggs and then leave. The eggs hatch, the turtles crawl to the sea, and begin their life. The parents aren't around at all. Thanks to our species' typical behavior (parents raising their children) we can sometimes think this is the only way it can be, but there are many different parenting models in the animal kingdom.
Re:As an old farmboy, all I can say is... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've ever spent any time with a head of cows, this would be pretty obvious.
They are countless examples of "pretty obvious" things that turned out not to be true.
Your experience, for example, could be down to confirmation bias [wikipedia.org], for all any outsider might know.
Re:Old news (Score:3, Interesting)
I visited a milking ranch once and the rancher told me the cows tend to line up to be milked in a regular order. There is a hierarchy in the herd and the lower status cows get the back of the line. A change in the order indicates something is up
It's amazing to me how "scientists" often know very little about the things they are studying. Ask someone who actually WORKS in the field and they can tell the scientists all sorts of information. The scientists may still be useful to measure and quantify the common knowledge, but it is hardly a new discovery.