One alerted animal easily transfers its concern to the others in the herd. They have eyes on the side of their heads so they can see in all directions and ears as big as feet for purposes of detecting possible attackers. Cows still have the characteristics that kept them alive when they were wild animals avoiding predators. Domesticated cows are relatively calm animals but they are spooked by unexpected events.

It’s not that easy to sneak up on a herd of cows. Because each individual cow spends so little time in deep sleep most cows in a herd are alert even at night. Cows also need about an hour of a deeper kind of sleep which they take in short naps of a few minutes each spread over a 24 hour period. This kind of sleep is easily interrupted and allows them to be aware of their surroundings. Most of their “sleeping” is very light-more what we would consider a very relaxed state. The sleeping habits of cattle developed when they were prey animals hunted by predators. Read the related article, originally published in Skeptic magazine issue 20.1 (1999).Ĭartoon panel 2: Cows don’t sleep for hours at a time like people do. Where in the world did this strange idea come from? It turns out that the story comes from Europe and it’s been around for at least 2000 years. One of the oddest parts of the cow tipping story is the claim that a cow sleeps standing up “on locked legs” that are so ridged and unbending that it can be easily pushed over. In a 1725 copper etching, huntsmen approach a moose felled by epilepsy. Why People Who Know About Cows Think That the Cow Tipping Story is Largely an Urban LegendĬartoon panel 1 (top of this article): There is no such thing as a cow “locking its legs.” They don’t have to because cows sleep lying down (people may be confusing them with horses which do sleep standing up). But you will probably find that you don’t have to ask very many people to find someone who absolutely swears they tipped cows over exactly the way it’s described in the cartoon above. Anyone who has ever worked closely with cows knows that almost every statement in the cow tipping story is false (as we will explain below). We call this the most urban (city-like) of all Urban Legends because it’s a story believed by city folk, although farm people have been known to tell it as a tall tale. The following article, written for children, is from Junior Skeptic # 5 on Urban Legends, published in Skeptic magazine issue 7.2 (1999).

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