Aug 25 2008
Cows from Space
New Scientist has reported on some new research supposedly going to be published in PNAS about seeing cows from space. Well… not only that, they claim to be able to see which direction they’re facing. Oook. A Scienceborger picked it up and ran with it too. So I thought I’d show some pictures of cattle farm (where we’re pretty much guaranteed to see some cows), although they aren’t in the wild, so maybe they won’t all face North/South like the borgers are telling us they do. Oh, they also claim to do this in Google Earth.
First, a typical scene in Google Earth of a spot no one wants to see. Hence, it’s got really crappy spatial resolution. Click for larger versions of all images.
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This happens to be John’s Farm in Fairview, OK. Feel free to point out the cows.
The next image shows a place that I’ve driven by a few times. I don’t recall if they’re cows or what they’re raising. But they sure do stink. This is south of Mesa, AZ.
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The spatial resolution on this image is 1 meter - it’s the best I’ve seen on Google Earth, and I’m pointing at a spot that I know has some sort of livestock roaming, soon to be on my dinner plate (or milk in the fridge, or something). Are those cows? I can’t tell from the imagery. Are they facing the same direction? I dunno. I can’t even tell what they are, remember?
How bouts another one? Omni Farms in North Carolina.
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I couldn’t even locate any livestock in this image. Although from their website, it appears that they have some, somewhere.
Using the Google (Search Engine, not Earth), I find another cattle farm. This time it’s Howland Homestead Farms in South Kent, CT.
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Is that cows I see in the lower-right corner?!? Let’s zoom in to see.
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Again, this is about the best imagery that I’ve seen on Google Earth. It appears to be better than 1 meter resolution (although I don’t know where Google might have gotten it). Digital Globe does offer a ~60 cm Panchromatic band, so I suppose G could have done some coolio stuff to it. But given that they don’t even match adjacent scenes, I find that hard to believe. Instead, I’m going with the ruler technique in Google Earth isn’t that accurate. 
Anyway, I still can’t tell if they’re cows or not. Or which way they’re pointed.
The DOI that both articles link to doesn’t exist. I could not find the author using Google Scholar. I could not find the author on the Universities webpage. I could not find reference to the author at all using TheGoogle. I would really like to see this paper, if it exists, because I would like to know what a herd of cows looks like from space.
Regards.
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20 Responses to “Cows from Space”
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Scientific American with New Scientist (and not the Scienceborger, whom this post was mostly based on) that the author is Hynek Burda, who does exist. Although this PNAS article is not in his list of publications. I have emailed him to ask for clarification.
NPR picked this up as well. I heard it rush hour Eastern time.
PNAS has the paper.
The PNAS link works for me. But I do not have access to the pdf.
Yes, it does now. It didn’t when I wrote this. There are no satellite images in the paper. I’ve rewritten the corresponding author for clarification.
I don’t know about identifying what they are (I can’t tell either), but, from the standpoint of image analysis, an image of a cow is what’s called a “blob” in the image processing lingo (aptly named, no?) and its easy to determine the longest (and shortest) axes of a blob (including angle of orientation)
Apart from the practical problems of finding cows in images, however, the whole idea that cows are aligning with the earth’s magnetic field does seem a bit far-fetched.
What would be the advantage for a cow? Or maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe it’s some kind of residual ability from an earlier period in a cows evolution? back when it was sheep?
But truth is stranger than fiction, so I don’t really know.
If this does turn out to be true, next time I get lost in a cow pasture, at least I’ll know which direction to go.
Although I was very young when I spent my summers on a cattle farm, I recall the cows facing broad-side only during the colder parts of a day or during early spring and on cold days. However, when they wanted shade, they would face Head-to-Tail opposite the sun. I’m guessing this was to provide optimal or minimal surface area to be warmed by the sun.
I guess you could use that to say the face N/S, but only when it’s cold and clear out when the pictures were taken.
Then again, this could be me just applying some imaginary rational to something random and trivial!
I used to live in a pastoral area in western WA state, surrounded on three sides by Black Angus and Herefords. I always thought they turned their short side to the sun when they didn’t have anywhere to shade up.
They may be able to sense the earth’s magnetic field like birds do, but I can’t imagine the benefit (not that humans being unable to imagine something means anything).
Best,
D
Oops.
A good test for this ’sun orientation’ theory is to fly an aerial survey on a cloudy day and count (its likely a sat pic can’t see thru clouds to spot cows).
Best,
D
The article seems to imply that it’s not simply a north south thing.
Apparently, the cows can actually sense the declination from true north! (mapmakers that the are)
And if they were simply orienting parallel to the sun to cool themselves on hot days, one would think that they would actually rotate as the day wore on — kind of like the stars about the north star.
maybe what we really need are some time lapse pictures of a herd of cows!
BTW, does anyone know where to apply for research dollars for this kind of stuff?
Gotta correlate with the wind direction on the ground. One thing hang glider pilots look for when landing out in the boondocks is cows, on the notion if there’s much of a breeze they usually stand tail to the wind. Unless they don’t. Not all that reliable, but it’s a factor.
Aside, unrelated — your ‘contact’ link seems to be broken (at least with Firefox 2/Win and FF3/Mac, from two different locations).
The requested method POST is not allowed for the URL /blog/wp-content/cache/supercache/atmoz.org/blog/contact//index.html.
[Reply: It appears that the form is not compatible with one of the other plugins I'm using. I'll look into finding a different one.]
Also unrelated, a question I also asked William Connolley over at Stoat, is it possible to do something with sea ice like you both did with annual temperature changes, showing 5-year trends didn’t mean much and how much longer a time span is useful — but to do it for number of days, for those of us watching the pixels stagger down the page on the Arctic sea ice?
[Reply: Sure. Do you have like to daily sea ice data?]
Now back to cows, sorry for the digression.
I’m looking at a bunch of cows at the moment - amazingly they are all facing north.
They must have some incredible ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field - oh, wait a minute, there is a bitter southerly wind blowing and the cows don’t like cold icy rain in their faces so perhaps …
I did a quick survey on my way home tonight (between 1730 and 1745 UT). 80% of cattle and about 60% of sheep were facing East.
Clear skies, and no wind to speak of.
Admittedly it was a small sample size (40 cattle, around 100 sheep), but two possible explanations came to mind:
1. The sun was low in the west, so facing east probably avoided glare.
2. If the bovine inhabitants of Scotland are like their human counterparts, they probably take a certain perverse pride in being a little bit different from the rest of the world.
sea ice data:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
(link for data):
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
per Connolley, here:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/07/sea_ice_im_in_nature_again.php#comment-1065594
Can they see if the cows have guns from the satellite?
[...] in my last post, I said I was emailing the authors of the recent PNAS article about resolving the directions of [...]
Also:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
http://nsidc.org/data/smmr_ssmi_ancillary/gis.html
“Monthly averages are considered more accurate indicators of overall sea ice trends”
Can they see if the cows have guns from the satellite?
They can count the veins on a leaf on a tree from space. They could 20 years ago. 25 years ago it was common practice to identify the rank of soldiers as a function of the analysis.
I think these particular cows are wearing body armor and you can tell by their spatial arrangement that they are performing an E&E exercise. ;o)
Best,
D
Dano,
I’m not sure what the military can do, but neither of those functions can be done with civilian satellites. But they are definitely performing an E&E exercise.
Dear all,
do you really believe that a scientific journal like PNAS would accept for publication a paper, which has not been rigorously peer reviewed and where apparent alternative explanations were not considered? We are overwhelmed by reaction our article has released. We did not expect it, we do not understand it. Unfortunatelly, since most people read only second-hand reports in newspapers etc. and not the original paper, there are many misunderstandings. We do not manage to rectify them in all the blogs, forums etc. in the internet. Please read our more detailled reply in
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080825/full/news.2008.1059.html
If you wish to read the original paper, just contact us - it should not be a problem to find the contact - we got already mails from several hundred people from all over the world.
As far as searching for cows in Google Earth is concerned - apparently it requires more experience and more patience than the author of the above introductory story had. You may check e.g. following coordinates
45-54-11-09 N, 01-13-41-34 E or 51-23-09-83 N, 07-03-13-65 E.
to get an idea with which resolution we worked.
(and do not forget thousands of deer - as well as cows - we also observed directly - not only on Google Earth images)
Hynek Burda, Sabine Begall, Jaroslav Cerveny, Julia Neef, Oldrich Vojtech
Well, I appreciate the form comment from the authors.
I must say this past weekend I drove thru Park Co, Colorado USA - very pastoral - and made extra effort to observe the cattle herds (despite having lived in a heavily pastoral area prior to here); I was driving safely, I swear. Attest. Aver.
There were some herds that definitely had more members than not facing north. Some herds had fewer than ~1/4 facing north. I will get out my digital pix of my old property in western WA state and see whether the Black Angus to my west were facing a particular direction, or whether the Herefords and BA to the south were doing so. About 400 ac of cows nearly surrounding me, and I took a lot of pix. I think I have some from a photo study I did on the Front Range too, and I’ll look at those.
At any rate, it is an interesting finding and I’d like to see more empirical work affirming it before I tell the family back in the Midwest.
Surely I’m more likely to believe it than the moribund canned statements coming out of Minnesota during the political campaign.