Animal magnetism study welcomed

A NEW scientific study showing that grazing cattle and sleeping deer tend to align their bodies along the north/south axis of the earth's magnetic field will be of major interest to farmers and scientists, an Irish expert said yesterday.

Dr James Dunne of the Zoology Department of University College Galway said the study, which used satellite imagery, was fascinating.

Herdsmen and hunters have long known that cattle and sheep tend to face the same direction when grazing, but had believed they were simply positioning themselves according to prevailing winds or the sun's rays.

Sabine Begall of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and colleagues studied 8,510 satellite images of cattle and deer herds derived from Google Earth, including 308 pastures and plains.

They also looked at deer beds - impressions left in the snow by resting deer - from nearly 3,000 deer in more than 225 locations in the Czech Republic.

They found that whether grazing or resting, these animals face either magnetic north or south. Since the direction of the wind and sun varied widely where the images were taken, the researchers believe the Earth's magnetic field to be the polarising factor.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times