If you’re like me, or at least were like me until a few days ago, you don’t know nearly as much about cows as you should. But be not forlorn, for by the time you’re finished reading this, you will no longer reside in a cow-deprived state. Like, say, Rhode Island.
My cow curiosity was piqued by a stroll past a bookcase in our house where children’s books still dwell, and when my eyes fell on Sandra Boynton’s classic Moo, Baa, La La La!, I realized I was relatively familiar with two of the three animals on the cover—sheep, from three weeks among them on New Zealand’s South Island, where they outnumber humans two to one, and pigs, from a variety of sources, most notably our son’s mild obsession with them after a few weeks as a swineherd at a camp in the Adirondacks. But except for a few staring contests—all of which I lost—spread out over a couple of decades, I had little cow contact. They seemed a gentle lot, but if there was much else going on behind those big, semi-sad eyes, it had till recently evaded me. But it turns out you don’t have to look very hard to find all manner of amazing cow shit.
First, for reasons that are as unimportant as they are non-existent, the myth of cow tipping must be dispensed with. Like many eastern rubes that ventured into small midwestern towns to begin our newspaper careers, I was told this rural myth as truth and, despite never seeing or participating in such a blatantly sociopathic activity, I likely did believe it at first. It’s okay, I eventually got these farm fabulists back by spreading all kinds of misinformation about Judaism, as when you’re the only Jew in town and the internet doesn’t exist there’s no way they can check your stories. I especially liked the one about so many Jews having thick, curly hair as a way to hide our extra ears.
Studies show it would take anywhere from four to fourteen people to exert enough pressure to tip over an adult cow, depending on how resistant the cow proves to be. Cows will sometimes sleep lightly while standing, but do the vast majority of their solid sleeping lying down. Given this, the element of surprise would be critical to the success of the enterprise, and as it turns out, cows are shockingly difficult to surprise for an astonishing host of reasons. First, they have a keen awareness of their surroundings, which you’d have too if you had a 330-degree range of vision without moving your head. That means the only thing they can’t see is what’s directly behind them, but they also have excellent hearing, so you’d have to sneak up on them very quietly with a 30-degree margin for error. And if even if you could pull that off, which you couldn’t, cows can detect odors up to six miles away, and since your typical cow tipper reeks of at least a handful of noxious substances, the math is not difficult, and shoves this agri-fable from the realm of the unlikely to the impossible. Also, cows have excellent memories, and apparently are both capable of and often choose to hold grudges against those who have wronged them which, if not for the eight hours a day they spend chewing their cud, would render them indistinguishable from many of my relatives.
Cows are physically, spatially, and socially discerning, which is more than one can say for an arc or two of most people’s circle of friends. Their herds have complex social dynamics, and their personality types rival dogs, cats and humans for diversity. They tend to pick the smartest and most capable cows as leaders, and marginalize the pushy dickheads. Wonder what that’s like? They’re pretty good with shapes and colors, and exhibit cow-specific signs of excitement and pleasure when they accomplish intellectually challenging tasks, kind of like a certain ex-president when he describes acing his cognitive tests. And remember, while he claims to be a stable genius, cows are a stable-dwelling genus.
Cows are extremely social, even empathetic. When let into a space with pictures of other cows, they made a bovine beeline for the ones they know, and they actively seek out those cows with whom they’ve bonded most to spend time with. They’re so tuned in to the feelings of other cows that if they encounter a herd mate who is stressed, they’ll try to calm them down by standing close. Of course, they detect stress through the smell of another cow’s urine, but hey, one takes emotional intelligence where one can find it these days. And you can read emotion both in a cow’s eyes—the whites expand when they’re feeling scared or frustrated, and contract when they’re happy—and their ears, which hang down when they’re calm and at ease.
Researchers have found that cows who are given and called by names and treated as individuals produce almost 500 more pints of milk a year, and they’re happier, producing lower levels of a stress hormone associated with negative feelings.
Definitional digression: To this point I have been misusing the word “cow.” Cows are the adult female sub-division of cattle, which also includes bulls, or adult males. I simply like the word cow much better than cattle, and will continue to misuse it because, and I can’t stress this enough, I want to.
And now the bad news you know. Cows do have a nasty carbon hoofprint, but from the other end than you’re thinking. Cow burps account for about 95% of the methane they produce, so while bovine flatulence is 1) fun to say and 2) a decent band name, it is not the climate culprit. And this is important, because apparently it’s much easier to mitigate the damage from cow burps than farts, and many feed additives are being tested for their effectiveness. An ounce a day of Hawaiian red seaweed has reduced methane emissions by at least 40%, which they measure in special cow burp collection and containment pods, though it’s unclear yet how much such a reduction would diminish over time. And to be clear, it wouldn’t reduce the frequency or intensity of cow burping, just its toxicity, which seems a win-win. In other less-than-wondrous data discovered along the tao of the cow, they produce up to 50 quarts of saliva daily, but then again that’s because they spend eight hours a day ruminating. If I spent half as long in the human variant of that activity I’d live in an endless existential crisis.
I don’t pretend to understand the economic and climatic impact that would occur if we all stopped eating beef and dairy products. Hamburgers were a staple of my childhood diet, and once in a while I still indulge, partly because they’re so much better than they used to be. But I should stop. Instead of eating and draining them, we should marvel at their weird wonderfulness, because cows are what we all want to be: objectively cool.
Wow, I learned so much today.