Cattle (and deer) shown to align north -- south

[eidsvolling]

Hoo boy, this one's gonna generate more heat than the "traditional" bona fides of certain high-tech bows.

A team of researchers has determined from examining Google Earth-published images that  cattle and deer tend to align themselves north -- south  while grazing and resting.

[elkbreath]

Yeah, I heard about this today on NPR.  Not sure how I can translate it into anything useful though.  I can see it now "hunt into the magnetic stream"

[Brian Krebs]

Geesh - we haven't noticed it for thousands of years?
 
 I tend to hunt when animals are headed to and from food sources..

 And I am not falling for any magnet in the ear of corn stuff... been through enough magnets fishing for steelhead..!!

[Don Stokes]

Guess they don't like having the sun in their eyes.

[buckeye_hunter]

Probably spent about $100k of our tax money on that little bit of, I think, fairly useless research. Please feel free to correct me if y'all see any real value in this.

-Charlie

[gregg dudley]

I used to hunt with a guy that claimed there were nort/south deer and east/west deer.  No lie.

The cattle line up that way to give landing directions to wayward space vehicles.  I thought everybody knew that.

[HATCHCHASER]

Don't drink the Kool-aid...  

[madness522]

Wonder how much of our taxes they spend on that useless info?  Remember the methane gas study that was done on cows?  Another prime example of wasteful spending.

[JimB]

I saw some cows the other day,out of alignment.

[Paul/KS]

Me too Jim...  :confused:

[Orion]

The researchers attributed it to awareness of the earth's magnetic field.  Hmmmmmmmmm.  Might it be because prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere are generally from the west.  Or maybe it has something to do with the sun moving from east to west.  A lot of land features in the glaciated midwest run primarily north/south, ridges and valleys, for example.  In short, a lot of other possible explanations.  I believe theirs might be spurious.

[Biff]

Having many years in my youth herding cattle, I know it's a bunch of crap. The only time I saw them all facing in the same direction was during a storm, with their butts to the wind. Can you just imagine them grazing north, hitting the fence and having to go all the way back to the south fence to start over again?   Biff

[non-typical]

That explains why the north facing bucks have the greatest amount of velvet on their developing antlers as opposed to the south facing bucks which have appreciably less. However, the south facing bucks have a better sense of rhythm which is why they get the does.

[Tom Anderson]

Originally posted by non-typical:
That explains why the north facing bucks have the greatest amount of velvet on their developing antlers as opposed to the south facing bucks which have appreciably less. However, the south facing bucks have a better sense of rhythm which is why they get the does.

Now that's funny right there...