Cows Have Unique Moos That They Use To Express Their Feelings, Study Finds
01/18/2020 05:38 pm ET
Listen carefully, and cows will tell you their mooooooods.
By Hilary Hanson
When cows moo, people should listen.
New research has found that individual cows have unique voices that they use to express an array of emotions in different situations.
Cattle are widely known to be social, herd-dwelling animals. But vocal interactions between cows had only previously been formally studied through the lens of mother and calf relationships, scientists wrote in a study published in Scientific Reports last month. For the new study, researchers wanted to look at how cows communicate with the rest of their herd in different situations.
The research involved a free-range herd of young Holstein-Friesian cows at a farm in New South Wales, Australia. Researchers recorded the cows’ vocalizations in positive contexts ― like times when the cows were in a period of being sexually receptive or were anticipating eating ― and negative contexts, including being denied feed or being isolated from their fellow cows. (The study noted that any negative situations were temporary.) In all, researchers ended up with 333 recordings from 13 cows.
“We found that their voices are individually distinct,” lead researcher Alexandra Green, a PhD student at the University of Sydney, told Atlas Obscura. “But further to that, they’re able to maintain these individual characteristics across the contexts.”
More:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cow-moo-feelings-study_n_5e237ee5c5b674e44b992ab9
= new reply since forum marked as read
when I lived on a farm I came home from work and there was a newborn calf that had slipped under a fence, it was stumbling around but its mama was BELLOWING at the fence.....it took me a while to get the calf back in the field and in the meantime, other cows had come over, joining the mama with concerned moos 
