Google Cows (and Whales) : Black and White and Pointing North All Over

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From the Milky Way of satellites Google Earth has unearthed yet another milky way mystery: cows like to align themselves with the earth's magnetic field.

German zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen studied photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, and found two out of every three cows were pointed in a North-South direction, like grass-munching compass needles. (Although they couldn't decipher heads from tails - all cows know that both of their ends of are important.)

Field studies of red and roe deer in the Czech Republic, revealed similar findings.

For some time scientists have known that certain bacteria, bees, and migrating animals like fish, birds, whales, bats, and some rodents have minute organs with magnetite in their brains, that act like compasses. But these new findings are some of the first to indicate the same could be true for larger land animals.

Caltech geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink is very interested but not surprised: "We have to remember that whales are descended from a common ancestor of cows."

That is something I have never remembered.

Whales and cows - gene pool cousins - baby whales are calfs...

The world upside down, aligns itself again, in amazing fashion.

Wildebeests migrate... I bet they're related to cows and whales too.

Here's a link for a full LA Times article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-cows26-2008aug26,0,7611516.story

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