26 August 2008
Animals sixth sense - magnetic sense
I found an interesting article that talks about the sixth sense animals especially cattle. A study of Google Earth satellite images has revealed that herds of cattle tend to face in the north-south direction of Earth's magnetic lines.
Apart from cows, the observations revealed that red and roe deer also showed those animals facing toward magnetic north or south. The statistics seem to have been taken from 8510 cattle in 308 locations in the world. Most of them were facing north-south direction.
The data on 2,974 deer came from direct ground observations and photos in the Czech Republic. Researchers also examined fresh beds left by resting deer in the snow, where the animals had sought shelter deep in the forest away from the wind.
Both cattle and deer faced a more magnetic north-south direction rather than geographic north-south, (Earth's magnetic poles do not line up perfectly with the North and South Poles).
However, the next question that pops in the mind of the researchers is that this magnetic sense could affect the production of milk in animals that face the east-west direction.