Can we Navigate by Cows rather than by using Magnetic Compass or GPS?

How can we navigate by using the positions of cows?

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Cows behave as magnetic compass needles as they align their bodies in a north-south direction.

Cows have been valued and considered sacred in most human cultures as long as humans have been around.Cows have been valued and considered sacred in most human cultures as long as humans have been around.

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• In the Eddas, the myth of Iceland written between the 8^th and 13^th centuries, Audhumla ("Without Impurity") created humankind by licking the salt and hoar frost on ice blocks in three days. 
• In Hinduism, the cow is considered the mother of gods. Kamadhenu, the sacred cow in ancient India, is the cow, which grants all wishes and desires. 

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• In ancient Egypt, there were many cow deities like Hathor, the Milky way, Nut, the sky goddess, Mehueret, the Flood and Bata, the goddess of fertility. 

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• The Maasai people in east Africa claim that all cattle in the world belong to them. With an average of 14-19 head of cattle per person, the Maasai are one of the wealthiest cattle-owning peoples in Africa. "I hope your cattle are well", the Maasai greet each other.

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Animals Considered as Machines by Science, Paradoxically

Even Charles Darwin, the father of evolution theory considered animal intelligence to be a worthy field of study. He found that even earthworms are cognitive beings, as they need to make judgments about the kinds of leafy matter they use to block their tunnels. 

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In the early 20^th century, behaviourism regarded animals as machines and considered all field observations of animal cognition as anecdotes tinged with anthropomorphism. Since then, animals are not considered by scientists to have cognitive functions, which most pet owners totally disagree with.

Recently, serious researchers like Sabine Begall, Jaroslav Červen, Julia Neef, Oldřich Vojtěch, and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany researched animal magnetism. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they studied if large animals like cattle display the ability to perceive magnetic fields.

By studying thousands of images of grazing cows captured by Google Earth, and compensating for the fact that grazing animals orient themselves to minimize wind chill and maximize the warmth of the sun, they found that cows do have a tendency to act like compass needles.

Can we look at cows and tell where the magnetic north is?

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Please continue using your compass or GPS. The study does, however, open new horizons for studying how magnetoreception affects animals in fields like applied ethology, which is animal husbandry, and animal welfare. The researchers also claim that birds and mole rats have magnetic particles of magnetite in their cornea.

The human eye and the brain also generate magnetic fields. Researchers R.A. Armstrong and B. Janday of the Biomagnetism Research Group, Department of Vision Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham have found that both the eye and the brain, when stimulated with some visual cues generate magnetic fields. These magnetic fields can then be measured with a magnetometer; a device which uses superconducting technology.

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As the saying goes "All is not butter that comes from the cow" - Proverb.

Anti Cow Sentiments

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Well, not everyone is cow-friendly. Some famous people have been very anti-cow.

• "A mind of the caliber of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows." George Bernard Shaw
• "Sacred cows make the best hamburgers." Mark Twain
• "Who was the first guy that look at a cow and said, "I think that I'll drink whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them?" Bill Watterson
• "The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat." John McNulty

Two Languages Two Minds! Cultural Frame Switching!

Do you behave differently in different surroundings, especially when you are speaking in different languages?

Are you aware of CFS or cultural frame switching?

What is Cultural Frame Switching?

Cultural frame switching refers to the phenomenon where bicultural individuals shift values and attributions in the presence of culture-relevant stimuli.

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I notice that I am a very different person while I speak Italian compared to when I converse in Finnish. Many bilingual individuals speak about their similar experiences with speaking different languages. For example, in one context they are more extravert and open, while they are more subdued and conscientious in another. They say that they feel like a different person depending on which language they are speaking. A new study lends credence to their claims.

Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, charted the personality traits of 225 Spanish/English bilingual subjects in both the U.S. and Mexico as they responded to questions presented in each language. 

The five dimensions along which difference were noticed among bilinguals are: 

1. Extraversion
2. Agreeableness
3. Conscientiousness
4. Neuroticism
5. Openness. 

Ramírez-Esparza and her colleagues found that when using English in USA, the bilinguals were more extraverted, agreeable and conscientious than when using Spanish. The differences in neuroticism were not significant.

Previously researchers have shown before that bicultural individuals can assume different roles depending on environmental cues. But the new results indicate that character itself can morph.  

“To show that changes in personality—albeit modest ones—can be triggered by something as subtle as the language you’re speaking suggests that personality is more malleable than is widely expected,” Ramírez-Esparza explains.

When bilinguals answer questions in their native language the values and attitudes associated with that language condition their answers. When they respond to a questionnaire in their second language, norms and values associated with that language affect their responses.

Though switching tongues will not turn a bookworm into a party animal, but the variances are noticeable nonetheless.

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The number of bilingual and bicultural people in the world is significant. 

Does having the ability to function in different personality modes give you skill and competence advantages as an employee or as a community member? 

Does it make you a better team member or a better boss?

Photo source:: http://www.morguefile.com/ Photographers:  taliesin and Keith Richardson

Two worlds inside our brains - Two interconnected hemispheres

What happens inside our brains is the most fascinating mystery of the universe. 

If in doubt about your cerebral capacity, think about the following facts about the human brain.

• The human brain is said to have 100 billion neurons, like the number of stars in our galaxy. There is indeed a principle in alchemy - as within, so without.

We know that the human brain has two interconnected hemispheres though we are not usually aware of their differences in functioning. The hemispheres communicate with each other through a thick band of 200-250 million nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. 

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It seems that each hemisphere of the brain is dominant for specific behaviours:

• the right brain is dominant for spatial abilities, face recognition, visual imagery and music 
• the left brain may be more dominant for calculations, math and logical abilities. 

These are generalisations and in healthy people, the two hemispheres work together and share information through the corpus callosum. Much of what we know about the right and left hemispheres comes from studies of people who have had the corpus callosum split or suffered other injuries affecting brain structures or specific areas of the brain.

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Insider Description of a Stroke Impairing Brain Functions

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor tells from personal experience the different roles each brain hemisphere play and what happens when a stroke begins to shut down brain functions.

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During a massive stroke she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding - she studied and remembered every moment and describes it here. This is a fascinating description of experiencing a stroke, shared by a highly trained and experienced neuroanatomist.

People from different cultures use their brains differently.

People from different cultures use their brains differently.

We've heard this often, but now there's scientific proof.

People from East Asian Cultures use their Brain Differently from People in American Culture

According to the latest results from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, people from East Asian cultures use their brains differently from people immersed in American culture when solving the same visual mental tasks. 

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Does this mean that some cultures are brainier than others? 

This had been the central argument of colonialism, where the Victorian men were portrayed as the epitome of civilisation and others struggling to remain just over the simian border. 

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Some people would revel at any opportunity to prove that they are better than others and use this to justify their claims, no doubt! 

Different usage of brain and thinking patterns results from needs to adapt to different circumstances and environment and the challenges faced. There is no way of measuring inherent superiority or inferiority because how are we to construct a scale for such measurements. Should it be task based, used moral judgements or measure behaviours under monitored circumstances?

Research Evidence of Thinking Patterns Changing with Environment

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Social psychology also provides strong evidence that one’s thinking patterns change depending on one’s experiences and environment. Western philosophers and psychologists usually take it for granted that the same basic processes underlie all human thought. 

Though cultural differences might dictate what people think about, the strategies and processes of thought, which include logical reasoning and a desire to understand situations and events in sequential terms of cause and effect, were assumed to be the same for all humans. 

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Research by social psychologists like Dr Richard Nisbett shows that people who grow up in different cultures actually think differently. The environment and culture in which you were raised affects and even makes many of your thought processes different from others. 

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So, we should have more understanding and not jump to conclusions too hastily.