The News:
Moo North: Cows Sense Earth's Magnetism
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
All Things Considered, August 25, 2008 · A new study suggests that cows sense the Earth's magnetic field and use it to line up their bodies so they face either north or south when grazing or resting.
The discovery was made by a team led by Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. "I think the really amazing thing is that hunters and herdsmen and farmers didn't notice it," Burda says.
Burda didn't set out to study cows. He normally studies small underground creatures called naked mole rats. They're blind, but have a kind of internal magnetic compass — they always build sleeping nests in the southern side of their little homes.
Burda wondered if sleeping humans might do something similar. He decided to look at camping tents and fired up Google Earth on his computer, to get an overhead view of campgrounds. Read on...
The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (click on full text PDF)
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