Why do African farmers draw eyes on their cows' buttocks?

Painting eyes on the buttocks of cows in Africa is a unique measure to protect livestock from lion attacks .

The cows with eyes painted on their buttocks live in Botswana, located in southern Africa and a landlocked country with large areas of grassland. Botswana's Okavango Delta and elsewhere are home to a wide variety of wildlife , including lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, African wild dogs, and other carnivores that live in national parks. family.

The local livestock industry is relatively developed, income from livestock accounts for about 80% of total agricultural income, of which the most important is livestock farming. However, the carnivores that live on the edges of the national park not only hunt wildebeest and gazelles in the grasslands, but they also pay attention to livestock living in fences outside the national park.

African farmers draw eyes on their cows' buttocks.

According to last year's census by the Botswana Bureau of Statistics, the number of livestock in the country fell from 2.5 million in 2011 to 1.7 million in 2015, many of which have become pets. prey for carnivores.

When a predator finds a herd of livestock raised by a farmer, it's like seeing moving hunks of meat that can be easily pounced on, after all, compared to wild animals outside. Besides, the escape ability of pets raised by humans is not very good. 

Farmers are naturally not happy to see their livestock being eaten, so they will find every way to destroy these predators. Some people choose to shoot predators with weapons, some choose to poison them, and some even use spears to hunt them. Although hunting wild animals is illegal in Botswana, some people still choose to risk it to protect their livestock.

To protect the rights of farmers and predators such as lions, Neil Jordan, a researcher at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), came up with the idea of ​​painting eyes on the buttocks of cows to ward off predators. .

It is said that Neil came up with this idea because during a field trip, he saw a lion stalking a gazelle for nearly 30 minutes, but it suddenly dropped off track when the gazelle turned away. turned around and saw the lion. Neil thought maybe it was the gazelle's gaze that saved his life. So if you draw a pair of eyes on an animal's rump, can you scare away a lion without looking back?

To be honest, Neil himself was initially skeptical of this seemingly strange method, so in 2015, Neil chose to conduct a small-scale preliminary experiment on a farm on the edge of a wildlife reserve. wildlife in northern Botswana.

First he prepares an "eye" template , then just draws the template and sticks it on the cow's rump. At the same time, he also prepared GPS-equipped cattle collars to track the location of the cattle and easily know whether they were being hunted or not.

Then, he drew eyes on the buttocks of 23 cows, while the remaining 39 cows did not have their butts drawn as a control.

Painting eyes on a cow's rump can be helpful in keeping an eye out for wild predators.

The cows were then released from the barn and recalled after a GPS-based search period. As a result, not all cows make it back alive. Three of the cows that did not have eyes painted on their buttocks were killed by lions, but all of the cows that had eyes painted on their buttocks were fine and they all returned home safely.

This result leads researchers to believe that drawing eyes on a cow's rump could be useful in guarding against wild predators . Therefore, Neil raised 6,323 USD in 2016 (expected 4,510 USD, 30% more than expected) as pilot fund and started official testing.

He plans to paint eyes on cow butts on a large scale at local farms, and he's also given the project a very techy name: i-cows.

The experiment lasted 4 years. The researchers drew eyes on the buttocks of 683 cows, crosses on the buttocks of 543 cows, and nothing on the buttocks of the remaining 835 cows as controls. It can be seen that the experimental method is still the same as before, but the scale is larger and the time is longer, so the data obtained is more reliable.

This method is called "deterrence tracking".

In four years, no cow with eyes painted on its rump was killed by wild predators; However, 4 cows with crosses on their buttocks and 15 cows with no markings on their buttocks died. The results of this experiment are still clear: drawing eyes on the buttocks actually has a very good role in protecting 'livestock safety'.

In fact, Africa's wild predators, lions, cheetahs and other predators, often rely on ambushes and surprise attacks to hunt. Lions can be more agile and will sometimes rush straight at their prey. On the contrary, cheetahs traveling alone will completely use ambush hunting tactics and hide in the grass before hunting.

In most cases, predators rely on surprise attacks to increase their odds of success. If they are seen by their prey, they will likely give up hunting. Because once seen, the prey will run away immediately. Although the predator can still catch up, losing the best opportunity to attack also means the probability of failure will increase greatly. much. In addition, the hunting process requires a lot of physical energy. If they catch prey, they can have a full meal and replenish their physical strength. If they cannot catch their prey, their efforts will be in vain. In this way, precise and effective attacks are very important for wild predators.

Painting eyes on a cow's rump serves to signal to potential predators that they have been detected, thus deterring them from further attacks . This method is called "deterrence tracking" . That's why drawing eyes on a cow's rump is useful - the look of the eyes tells the lion that it may fail in its attempt to hunt that prey.

This research has been published in the journal Nature Communications Biology.