Granted, it was a small sample size, but those results were encouraging enough to convince Jordan to conduct a more ambitious study over the last four years. His team worked with local farmers in the Okavango delta region, painting the cattle in 14 herds (a total of 2,061 animals). They used acrylic paint (black and white or yellow), applied with foam stencils in the shapes of the inner and outer "eye." The colors were chosen "because of their highly contrasting and aposematic* features, common in natural anti-predator signaling settings," the authors wrote.
Roughly one-third of the cattle in each herd got the eye patterns, one-third got simple cross-marks, and one-third weren't painted at all. The results confirmed Jordan's preliminary findings. Cattle with the painted eyes on their rumps were significantly more likely to survive than those cattle that had crosses painted on their butts and those that weren't painted at all. But the authors were surprised to find that even the painted crosses offered some survival advantage over the unpainted cattle. Over the course of the four-year study, 15 (out of 835) unpainted and four (out of 543) cross-painted cattle were killed by lions; none of the 683 cattle with painted eyes were killed.
The tactic will likely fail to deter the cattle's main predator...
[* Aposematic: conspicuous coloration or markings of an animal serving to warn off predators.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @03:46AM (6 children)
> Helps Ward off Predators Once
FTFY
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:19AM (5 children)
Weak correction. RTFA next time before frostpissing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:41AM (2 children)
Examples of natural eyespots - http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141112-six-ways-animals-use-fake-eyes [bbc.com]
The examples are all due to evolution. If it works well enough most of the time in nature, then it should work well enough most of the time when we use the concept. Of course, nothing is foolproof. SOMETHING kills and consumes all the critters with eyespots!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 19 2020, @07:09AM
In order to save paint and labor, we should cross breed cattle with butterflies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:58AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @05:35AM
Bullshit.
The day after they paint on all the cow butts, is the day the wolves ignore the cow butts.
The fact they left 50% non-painted butts in the same field is the ONLY reason the trick worked.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 19 2020, @12:23PM
It worked on Rataxis [youtube.com], it must be true.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:30AM
An ingenious solution, but still a good way to go [wikipedia.org] to "leg puller", "rope hammer" or "chuckle valves" [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:37AM (2 children)
Om, nom, nom.
Just in case any of you were wondering, the Burger Basket in Bells, TN is the best burger by far I've managed to find in the past five and a half years here. And I've been putting significant effort into the search because the burgers around here suck ALL OF THE ASS compared to out in cattle country.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @05:36AM
"Beef. It's what's for dinner. [wikipedia.org]"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @05:50AM
Why don't you fuckin munch your mom's burger and give her a score out of 10. I rate her about a 4. Dirty bitch never washed.
(Score: 5, Funny) by krishnoid on Wednesday August 19 2020, @05:04AM
Most cows with eyes on their butts were identified by local law enforcement face recognition systems as wanted criminals, so they spent most of the evaluation period incarcerated.
They should actually have experienced a similar level of risk, but the facilities in question had an oddly underrepresented predator population during the study period.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 19 2020, @06:15AM
Jordan? Jordan Peterson? Canadian of the all Beefeater diet, alone with his insane offspring [theguardian.com]? Now this submission makes sense. Sense about why it was submitted, and why it was accepted, but still nonsense. We could have had a perfectly cromulent aristarchus submission on QAnon, or Oleandrin, or Navy SEAL Breaking Right. But no, we get eyes on cow butts.
You know, Ancient Greeks, and Phonecians and others, used to paint eyes on the prows of their ships, so the ships could see dangers in advance. And of course, the best example of this in in Milagro Beanfield War [wikipedia.org], where the Sheriff drives out of town, over the painted lines cattle guard, and thinks, "How stupid can cows be!" But then, immediately, he thinks, "What kind of things like this am I falling for?"
This is a level of self-awareness unavailable to the likes of Runaway, and khallow, and TMB, since they like the Trumpster, and totally wound up in self-interest, and not adequately so. Locus Classicus, however, is a few millennia earlier, in the wisdom of Chuangzi:
From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [stanford.edu]
So, be careful, out there, so intent upon your prey, that you do not see that after the Fall of Trump, many will be criminally charged, either for collaboration, conspiracy, or culpable negligence. Many are already coming forward [go.com], to protect themselves. Cockroaches, cockroaches of the God-Imperator!
(Score: 4, Touché) by Bot on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:00AM
-wolf
-wof
-wat
-wof means wat in wolfspeak
-oh OK. y u no eat cow
-because it has tattoo of eyes on butt
-u scared of eye tattoo
-yes
-u know it is a mere tattoo
-yes, but sane cow does not tattoo eye on butt. so this one has mad cow disease
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:19PM
> The African lion population has dropped significantly from more than 100,000 in the 1990s to somewhere between 23,000 and 39,000 in 2016—much of it due to retaliation killings.
Look at root causes.
Why are the villagers encroaching in lion territory?
Their population keeps rising .
And yet Botswana is one of the sparsely populated African countries
https://www.populationpyramid.net/population-density/botswana/2100/ [populationpyramid.net]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:35PM
If you paint eyes on Cow Herds, then they would no longer be Anonymous Cow Herds.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday August 19 2020, @07:40PM
Anyone that knows what comes out of a cow's butt would want to avoid it.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P