” Morning cows”photo by James Jordan. (Creative Commons License)

I’ve always thought cows were awesome (not for eating…) and now it seems there is scientific proof. An article on NPR is talking about a new study that says cows can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and more than that, they use it the magnetic field to line up their bodies so they face either north or south for eating, grazing and resting.

Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany didn’t intend to study cows at first and kind of happened upon them.

Eventually, his team used Google Earth to look at more than 8,500 cows, over 300 pastures all around the world, according to a report in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

By analyzing the images, the team found that cows tend to face either magnetic north or south when grazing or resting. [NPR]

Google Earth is so amazing!

The scientists aren’t sure why the cows do this (maybe they’ll answer that next) but they are sure that Google Earth proved to be quite useful. Either way - this story proves that technology and nature are both super cool esp when used together! Go to NPR to read the entire piece (or listen).

For another example of technology, intelligence and animals being awesome watch the video below and be sure to takepart to help make sure we don’t eat all the cows!

Read on:

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• Ditch the Beef, Save the Environment