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: 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.