Named-cow researcher recognizes merit in research on sheep recognizing people

“I was asked if, as an Ig Nobel laureate myself, I thought this recent Cambridge sheep study would be a contender for an Ig Nobel award, the prize for science that “first makes you laugh, then makes you think”. Celebrity-spotting sheep might sound funny but the science involved in this study actually isn’t sniggerable.” So writes Catherine Douglas […]

Recognizing cattle from their nose prints

Although computer-assisted facial-recognition techniques for cow-indentification are making considerable progress (see previous), there are other ways of doing so – nose prints for example. Researchers Ary Noviyanto and Aniati Murni Arymurthy of the Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, outline the details in a comprehensve report for the journal Computers and Electronics in […]

Podcast 29: Eat a shrew, and an epidemic of penile amputations

The secret of why onions make people cry; the scientist who ate and excreted a shrew; the one-armed man who was arrested for applauding; the question of when cows lie down and stand up; and surgical management of an epidemic of penile amputations in Siam; and a cat unexpectedly taking over the podcast — all these all […]

Can you train a cow when/where to wee?

The research team that once looked into the question “Does water or blowing air stimulate Canadian cows to defecate?” has now tried to teach calves when and where to wee, to see if it could be done. Here’s their new study: “Operant conditioning of urination by calves,” Alison Vaughan, Anne Marie de Passillé, Joseph Stookey, and […]