Study Finds that Cows Talk and Show Compassion Just Like Humans

People often consider dogs the smartest animals ever. That is so, because dogs have proved themselves to be really good at telling when we are sad and reading our emotions.

However, according to a new research that’s been conducted recently, there are other animals as well that are able to understand our emotions and express themselves too in their very unique way.

Interestingly enough, the research was about cows. It turns out that cows have their way of communicating with each other about their emotions through their moos.

According to the research, the cows have individual vocal characteristics and chance their pitch every time they express certain feeling. Alexandra Green is the lead author of the research. She’s a Ph.D. student at the University of Sydney. She’s been really excited about this research of hers because it’s the first time they’ve been actually able to study voices so as to obtain evidence of this characteristic.

Alexandra Green’s study

Green has found out that cows can tell their feelings through their moos. According to her, these animals have individual vocal identities and change pitch in accordance with the emotion they want to share.

Cows seem to respond to positive and negative emotions as well. They use their voice so as to communicate with their herd and express emotions, including arousal, excitement, and distress.

There’s been a previous research that studied cows’ moms and babies. And the research discovered that they use their voices to communicate individually. However, Green’s study has shown that cows stick to their moos throughout their whole lives, including the times when they are talking to themselves.

According to the study, the animals would communicate with each other during their mating periods, when waiting for food, or when they are denied food, and when they are separated from each other.

The lead author of the research has included 333 cows. It analyzed their vocalizations and the outcome has been published in Scientific Reports. Cameron Clark, who is an associate professor at the university, said that Green’s research is like Google translate for cows. She considers the research very inspiring.

Back in time, the ability to communicate was considered as a feature that distinguished the human language from the way animals talk to each other. But this research proved that the ability of talking exists in the animal kingdom as well.

They use is to communicate their needs, like finding the resources of food, or if the herd needs to move to another location. It can be very helpful in alarming about some incoming threat too.

Anyways, Green hopes that the results of the study would reach out to farmers and motivate them to do something about improving animal welfare.

Sources:
ronproject.com
independent.co.uk
onegreenplanet.org