Health & Science

The cow’s inner compass; The great Arctic melt; The crows are watching you; Deathmatch: Bats vs. windmills; Another diet strategy busted

The cow’s inner compass

Bats, birds, and whales have a sixth sense that allows them to orient themselves in relation to Earth’s magnetic poles and migrate along identical paths every year. Even though they’re sedentary, cows, apparently, have this inner compass, too, says the Los Angeles Times. Czech researchers came to this surprising conclusion after looking through Google Earth satellite photos of herds of cows in 308 locations around the world; for some reason, the majority of the animals had aligned their bodies along the magnetic North-South axis of the globe. Researchers have no idea why cows would possess such an orientation faculty, since cattle don’t migrate. The magnetic sense, perhaps locked in a brain organ that maintains a store of magnetized iron, could be a tool for homeward orientation or may just be a vestigial trait of the cow’s evolutionary past. Researchers examining satellite photos also found evidence of magnetic orientation among deer; sensory biologist John Phillips of Virginia Tech University says further studies may find that the ability to detect Earth’s magnetic field is “virtually ubiquitous in the animal kingdom”—including human beings.

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