Publication details
Magnetický alignment dobytka
| Title in English | Cattle magnetic alignment |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Aktuální otázky bioklimatologie zvířat 2012 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Physiology |
| Keywords | magnetic alignment; cows; herds; positions; replication study; magnetoreception |
| Description | Magnetic alignment, a spontaneous body orientation along the geomagnetic field lines, is one remarkable behavioral manifestation of magnetic field sensitive animals. Recently, especially magnetic alignment of big mammals is intensively discussed topic. After analyzing satellite pictures and surprising discovering of this behavior of cattle on flat pastures (Begall et al., 2008), another group of authors (Heřt et al., 2011) cast doubt on their conclusions and relevance of the study. Our goal was to verify independently the magnetic alignment of cattle. We evaluated positions of both individuals (n = 2235, r = 0.21, p << 0.01, u = 179/359) and whole herds as well (n = 74, r = 0.27, p = 0.005, u = 5/185). Our conclusions are in line with original study: cattle on flat pastures do prefer north-south body orientation. |