The Incredible Chatting Cows! By Mrs Vera West
We are heading into the weekend now, after another tough week, as Jim Goad puts it, “The Worst Week Ever.” So, something light and gassy to round things off!
According to the meat-hating left, cows just let off gas, causing climate change, melting the ice and drowning polar bears, who happen to eat meat. But, cows have now been revealed to be more than just big bags of farts, but actually talk to each other in cow talk.
“Cows have their own language and talk to each other about food and the weather, according to a new study by scientists in Australia.
They created a software programme dubbed 'Google Translate for cows' to get a better idea of what the heifers were saying when they go 'moo'.
The study, by a PhD candidate from the University of Sydney, discovered that dairy cows also respond to positive and negative emotional situations.
Cows each have their own individual voice and linked their moods to their 'moos', said lead author Alexandra Green.
Biologists made the discovery by listening to Holstein-Fresian heifer cattle, a European breed, mooing into a microphone and analysing the pitch.
Ms Green and her team found each cow retains its own distinct moo and can give cues in different situations which helps them to maintain contact with the herd.
The team found they can also express excitement, arousal, engagement or distress.
'We found that cattle vocal individuality is relatively stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts', the lead author said.
The findings could help farmers keep their cattle healthy and happy by understanding each cow's mood by translating their individual moos.
Some research has already been done into communication between cows.
An earlier study found that cattle mothers and offspring are known to communicate by maintaining individuality in their lowing.
The new study confirms that cows maintain this individual mooing throughout their lives, even when they are nattering among themselves.
Dairy cows communicate with each other all the time, but when they are talking about happier things, like food, their moos are more sonorous, Ms Green said.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-54968-4
Abstract
Cattle mother-offspring contact calls encode individual-identity information; however, it is unknown whether cattle are able to maintain individuality when vocalising to familiar conspecifics over other positively and negatively valenced farming contexts. Accordingly, we recorded 333 high-frequency vocalisations from 13 Holstein-Friesian heifers during oestrus and anticipation of feed (putatively positive), as well as denied feed access and upon both physical and physical & visual isolation from conspecifics (putatively negative). We measured 21 source-related and nonlinear vocal parameters and stepwise discriminant function analyses (DFA) were performed. Calls were divided into positive (n = 170) and negative valence (n = 163) with each valence acting as a ‘training set’ to classify calls in the oppositely valenced ‘test set’. Furthermore, MANOVAs were conducted to determine which vocal parameters were implicated in individual distinctiveness. Within the putatively positive ‘training set’, the cross-validated DFA correctly classified 68.2% of the putatively positive calls and 52.1% of the putatively negative calls to the correct individual, respectively. Within the putatively negative ‘training set’, the cross-validated DFA correctly assigned 60.1% of putatively negative calls and 49.4% of putatively positive calls to the correct individual, respectively. All DFAs exceeded chance expectations indicating that vocal individuality of high-frequency calls is maintained across putatively positive and negative valence, with all vocal parameters except subharmonics responsible for this individual distinctiveness. This study shows that cattle vocal individuality of high-frequency calls is stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts. Individual distinctiveness is likely to attract social support from conspecifics, and knowledge of these individuality cues could assist farmers in detecting individual cattle for welfare or production purposes.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cows-communicate-unique-moos-1-180973971/
“Should you encounter a herd of cows munching on a field of grass, you might very well hear them emit some emphatic “moos.” It’s hard for humans to decipher these cow calls, but a new study shows that our bovine buddies communicate using unique voices, which remain consistent across a range of emotional circumstances.
Previous research has shown that mothers and calves show individuality in their vocalizations, helping moms recognize babies’ calls, and vice versa. But Alexandra Green, a PhD student at the University of Sydney’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences, wondered whether cows also display unique voices in other aspects of their lives. So she headed to a free-range farm on the university’s campus, equipped with headphones and a shotgun mic.
Green spent five months hanging out with a herd of Holstein-Friesian heifers, capturing their moos and lows. “My friends and family think it’s a bit funny,” she tells Liam Mannix of the Sydney Morning Herald, “but they are really intrigued by the results. Not many people think about this, I guess.”
In total, Green and her colleagues recorded 333 high-frequency vocalizations from 13 heifers, none of which had been pregnant. The calls were collected during a number of different situations, like when the cows were in heat and when they were anticipating a tasty meal, which the researchers identified as “positive” contexts. Calls were also collected when the animals were denied food, when they were physically isolated from their fellow herd members, and when they were both physically and visually isolated from the rest of the herd, which the researchers identified as “negative” contexts.
Using acoustic analyses programs, the researchers determined that the cows maintained individual vocal cues, whether they were communicating arousal, excitement or distress. It is “highly likely,” the study authors write, that cows are able to recognize other members of their herd through these calls. Listening back to her recordings, even Green could pick up on differences in the vocalizations.
“I could definitely tell them apart,” she tells Mannix.
The researchers’ findings align with previous observations indicating that cows are profoundly social creatures, which live in herds with observable hierarchies, experience long-term effects when they are separated from their mothers at an early age, and even learn better when they have their buddies around. It makes sense, in other words, that the animals would use vocal cues to aid in recognition of other herd members.
“In one sense, it isn't surprising they assert their individual identity throughout their life and not just during mother-calf imprinting,” Green acknowledges. “But this is the first time we have been able to analyse voice to have conclusive evidence of this trait.”
The study also adds to our understanding of the richness of cows’ social and emotional lives, an important finding at a time when cow welfare is severely compromised by mass farming practices. Farmers could use cow vocalizations to detect the wellbeing of distinct cattle, the study authors say—but treating cows as individual creatures with unique needs is often not a priority of industry farms.
“In the dairy industry, we’re seeing increasing herd sizes,” Green tells Isaac Schultz of Atlas Obscura. “We need to think of novel ways to look at their welfare.””
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