Painting fake eyes on cattle's butts reduces predation by large carnivores

Imagine the lion’s surprise when that face sneezes.

3 Likes

Fractalcat is self-similar.

fractal-cat

18 Likes

Well this is disturbing

6 Likes

That caterpillar immediately sprang to mind. Well done. [Edited to add:] I thought of this, too:
attention

8 Likes

No shit?

1 Like

The “wtf is that” effect might be the stronger effect, and it’s just that a pair of eyes on a cows ass are weirder looking than an X.

Wet suit swimmers are a lot more likely to attract sharks because they look like seals. A woman in Maine just died to a great white attack because she was swimming around with a wet suit on. There is a woman that was hawking a wet suit that she uses to go swim with great whites sharks. The wet-suit is basically zebra stripped, with the idea being that the shark just won’t attack a weird zebra stripped thing. There are a pile of her video swimming with great whites like they are dolphins, and they just ignore her.

It kind of makes me wonder what would happen if they painted the cattle purple or whatever looks “weird” and stark to their primary predator. If you could find a way to make the cattle look novel while not freaking out the cattle, maybe you could be a lot more effective in warding off predators.

Granted, I am mostly making this argument because I want someone to paint a cow with rainbow stripes.

2 Likes

I recently saw this video.

Poisoned cattle play a part. Things might have been different had the herdsman painted the cattle with extra eyes.

Possibly. But would also need to check whether males of the endangered species would still recognise the females of the species when they have eyes on their butts, and whether said eyes discouraged the males from breeding.

I know that this comment might sound like an attempt at humour, but it is a serious issue. Biologists doing experiments on reproductive success of individual birds in a caged colony used to identify individual birds by attaching a few coloured bands to one or both of their legs. Each bird got a different permutation of coloured bands. And then one day a bright biologist figured out that the colour of the bands on male birds could influence whether the females birds accepted them as partners, thus rendering years of prior studies as suspect.

3 Likes

Performance anxiety?

Actually I’m thinking about how ranchers have contributed to the extirpation of predatory species. This would be an alternative to poison.

Looking at the paper, the cattle in each treated group have 3 different treatments, painted eyes, painted XX instead of eyes and nothing. None of the cattle with eyes were attacked by ‘ambush’ predators over the experiment period. I wonder what the effectiveness would be with all cattle in a group having these eyes. I’d guess that the predators avoid the ‘eyed’ cattle as other less weird cattle are available, much like burglars avoid houses with dogs.

The other thought is it would be cool to add sound so that the cow’s rear roared when a predator came close. Really mess with the lion’s mind…

1 Like

aha - the lineage between felines, googly eyes and a certain Mr. Snuffleupagus is becoming clear

1 Like

I was thinking similarly. If this became a regular thing for cattle, would they need to remove the eyes before mating the cows?
If not, this could become a really weird market for tattoo artists.

Different phenomenon, I realize. But I just recalled that a few years back, a training center I worked at had coffee for students with an honor system cash box. We had the occasional pilferage, and were considering adding a camera to that room. But instead, we decided to try something like this, and reprinted the note taped to the cash box with a large smiley face beneath the text. Pilferage stopped, revenue went way up.

4 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.