“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 […]
Tag: cows
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 […]
Fujitsu promotes the Internet of Cows
Fujitsu devised this promotional video for what it calls “the Internet of Cows”: . Fujitsu’s more formal name for the innovation is “ox walk SaaS“. Fujitsu’s promotional activities turn on the phrase “I am the connected cow”, as you can see in this photo: Michael Byrne wrote a short essay about this cow news, for Motherboard. […]
Bells and No-bells (alpine cattle study)
Dairy cows, particularly in alpine regions (Switzerland, Austria &etc) are often seen (and heard) wearing bells. See photo: Although it’s traditional to fit such cows with bells, a question can, and indeed has, been asked : ‘Do Bells Affect Behaviour and Heart Rate Variability in Grazing Dairy Cows?’ Answers are provided in a 2015 PLoS […]