john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

The bovine compass

Tue, 2008-08-26 21:45 -- John Hawks

This is too strange:

Dr Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen looked at thousands of images of cattle on Google Earth in Britain, Ireland, India and the USA. They also studied 3,000 deer in the Czech Republic. The deer tended to face north when resting or grazing.

Although, in many cases, the images were not clear enough to determine which way the cattle were facing they were aligned on a north/south axis.

The scientists concluded that they were behaving in the same way as the deer.

(via Slashdot)

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