Visual freak-outs

[kozzy]

The other day I had a 14 month old heifer go a little crazy. I walked into the pasture with someone else (the cow is rarely exposed to others) and she acted like the big bad wolf had shown up. The other person did have on a brightly colored shirt but my usual wear is a bright orange t-shirt and that's never startled her in the past. A couple of days later with another guest I confirmed that simply having the second unusual body in the pasture wasn't really the problem--some expected wariness occurred but not a high fear response. At this point the only guess I have is that the color of the shirt had some specific wavelength component that might really have stood out to a cows eyes but just blended to our eyesight. It's just a wild guess and nothing more.

It got me looking into the visual acuity and perception differences of cows--for instance they tend to see the long-wave colors of yellows to red a little better and can't generally tell blue from gray at all. Bovine depth perception issues make it hard for them to determine how far away a threat actually is. Their odd corneas make focusing slow so some of the head bobbing you see when the beefie is looking at you is about trying to find a good focus spot through their eye--like trying to find the sweet spot in progressive lens glasses. The depth perception issue also means they MUCH prefer a meandering path when you walk up to them rather than a straight path because that helps them determine distance better.

I was wondering if anyone had discovered other specifics about what might unexpectedly spook their cattle--if you've noticed something that freaks them more than the expected response from quick movements or predator shapes. Some color which spooks them up? Some sound or type of movement which startles more than expected (and isn't related to normal predator fears)? A shape of some benign object which seemed to give an unexpected response? The subject of cow perception just had me interested due to this event--hoping that some with more experience might have noticed specifics which elicit what we might perceive to be unusually strong responses.

Thanks

[littlecowfl]

Back when I worked with range cattle, we used to joke about telling tourists with loud shirts to back away from the pasture fences because they were upsetting the cattle. It was mostly a joke, but it came from seeing cattle spook at brightly colored fashion offenses. These were spooky cattle to begin with, which is one reason I chose Dexter cattle to raise (it is so nice not to work with cattle that freak out easily).

I would say that this particular heifer is probably unusually high strung and I would take that under serious consideration when deciding whether or not she should reproduce.

[kozzy]

This was the one and only time she ever reacted this way. She was fairly calm before and has been calm after, even with strangers. It was like some specific visual cue acted as a trigger---hence trying to discover what visual cues one might not suspect but other have seen their cattle react weirdly to. There were some other things going on so it might just have been the sum of strange events for her that day but the subject still interests me.

I guess you could say I'm trying to learn to speak cow better :-)

[littlecowfl]

Well, that's a different story.

There are some theories about how many colors herbivores can actually see. They may be hardwired to react to specific colors. Some studies on horses suggest that some horses can see more colors than others.