The Cow Compass Challenge

ElectricAye

I read about this

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/08/25/cow.compass.ap/index.html

and it seems to me to be a somewhat sloppy way to investigate a phenomenon. Now, instead of aerial pictures, let's say we instrument a herd with Prop based sensors that can time stamp and record moment by moment their orientation? Once you've got it worked out with cows, hook up some people with it and do a double blind study. There you go, kids, your next Science Fair project.

cheers,
Mark

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It might be the Information Age but the Eon of Ignorance has yet to end.

Mike Huselton

Brilliant!

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JMH

mirror

In the morning cows face north/south to warm their body up - just like us humans.
In the middle of the day they expose minimal area to the sun - otherwise they could overheat - which means they need to stand north/south.

So on average, they'll probably spend most of the day facing north/south (well 60% to 70%) without any requirement to have an in-built compass.

All day-time data would need to be discarded in order to prove/disprove the compass theory.

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sylvie369

When I clicked on this thread I was so sure it was going to be a challenge to develop a Cow-based Magnetic Sensor object.

ElectricAye

I was just thinking that you might also have to be extra careful that electromagnetic interference from your Prop unit couldn't affect the brain of the cow or any of its likely sensor systems up near its head, so a collar-mounted unit perhaps should be avoided. Instead, consider a rear-mounted unit maybe affixed with superglue. If the cows have long horns, then perhaps the unit could be placed out near a tip.

ElectricAye

Ut-oh, and there are other complications to proving or disproving this phenomenon. Did you know that farmers FEED magnets to their cows?

I'm not kidding!

http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html

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It might be the Information Age but the Eon of Ignorance has yet to end.

Brian L

If the cows in the study were located substantially north of the equator, then maybe they just tend to face north to keep the sun out of their eyes.

ElectricAye

Brian, that was my first thought, too, but the article claims that the researchers filtered out any possible effects of sun position. However, what I'd bet they overlooked is the use of cow magnets positioned in their stomachs. Surely that would influence a cow's local magnetic field.

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It might be the Information Age but the Eon of Ignorance has yet to end.

Sniper King

instead of the propeller chips we could use cow chips! LOL

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·- Ouch, thats not suppose to be hot!··


Michael King
Application Engineer
R&D
Digital Technology Group

Beanie2k

ElectricAye said...
Ut-oh, and there are other complications to proving or disproving this phenomenon. Did you know that farmers FEED magnets to their cows?

I'm not kidding!

http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Pages/cowmags.html

In the early 1980's when gas was scarce due to the Iran-Iraq war there was a "junk science" craze where people were taping these cow magnets to their fuel lines to (supposedly) get better fuel economy. It got so bad that the farmers were having trouble getting magnets for their cows.