Happier Cows, Thanks to Math

Here's a kind of offbeat one for you today. Scientists have come up with a mathematical model to explain (or attempt to explain) a pretty interesting aspect of bovine behavior.

If you've ever spent any time in a cow pasture, you learn two things pretty quickly. First, always watch where you walk. Second, cows tend to sit or stand in groups. If one of them is laying down, chances are, most of them are laying down. And, if one of them is walking around, chances are most of them are walking around.

So, um ... why is that, exactly? (The groupthink behavior, that is. I imagine you can figure out the watching-where-you-walk part on your own.)

Jie Sun and his friends over at Clarkson University think they've got an answer for you. It has to do with oscillators, looking at cows as a binary system. The result is, as the abstract puts it, "a mathematical model for daily activities of a cow (eating, lying down, and standing) in terms of a piecewise affine dynamical system."

In plain English, that means, cows tend to operate in synchronicity, just like we said earlier. We already knew that, so who needs math anyway?

Well, here's the takeaway. The more synchronicity, the happier the cows appear to be, according to Technology Review. And, along with that, you've got to talk about coupling — the proximity of a cow to his nearest neighbor. More coupling, according to the study, appears to create less synchronicity.

As a practical matter, the closer cows are jammed together, the less synchronized they are, and that's an indication that they're uncomfortable or unhappy. Think about how you feel on a crowded elevator.

The real-world upshot is this: Happy cows yield more (and better tasting) milk, cheese, or meat if that's your thing. If you cram a bunch of cattle into your standard factory farm conditions, you end up with yuckier product.

So, the ethical arguments against factory farming are clear. And, the public health arguments against factory farming are also pretty well-established. Now, add the mathematical argument. Factory farming just doesn't add up.

Photo credit: John-Morgan