Cow facts

[asakiyume]

A couple of weekends ago was the B'town fair. I didn't get to see the parade, but I did seize some time to go to the exhibit hall and the 4-H tent. The theme for the fair this year was "Shake, Cattle, and Roll" (lots of good entrants for the brochure cover contest...), and inside the hall was this poster with cow** facts:



(You can click through to see it bigger)

These are amazing! Cows only sleep three hours a day? They are great swimmers and can swim for miles? I had no idea ...

Though ... it gives me a wicked desire to make up other cow facts that aren't true at all. After all, if a kid's display is going to have me believe that cows can swim for miles and steer with their tails, what else might be true?

--I have perfect night vision
--I have a kind of moo I use only with my calves. It's called the lullaby moo
--If the circumstances are right, I can live to be 80–90 years old

I mean, why not? Any fake cow facts you'd care to add?

**Isn't it weird that in English, we don't have a common, nongendered, singular word to use for this type of animal? We have "cattle," which can be either sex, but that's plural. But all our other words are gendered: "Cow" does not include bulls or steers (castrated bulls), which as terms in turn exclude cows. And "heifer" is a young cow, "typically one who hasn't had a calf."

Comments

[kayre]

I love agricultural fairs!

Now you make me want to go scan children's books and see if 'cow' is always represented as a female. Pretty sure that in casual conversation 'cow' is treated as nongendered much of the time. When driving and seeing one in a field, don't we say "cow" without checking? :)

[asakiyume]

We do, but I think in most cases we're actually seeing dairy cows, so they're female? ... Or maybe not: maybe we're also seeing beef cattle, in which case we're seeing steers. What we're NOT seeing very often is bulls.

[cmcmck]

Here it isn't 'steer' but stirk while a neat is a young unhorned ox (neat's foot oil and all that).

[asakiyume]

Cool!

[f0rrest]

I can produce very deadly toxic milk when I'm scared or upset.

[asakiyume]

Love it.

You know this would be a prime way of poisoning people if true.

[sartorias]

Cow facts, hmmmm...

Cows dance when nobody is looking.

Since cows dream all daqy, when they sleep, their minds teleport into birds.

[asakiyume]

So when you're looking at flocks of birds, just remember: it could be dreaming cows you're seeing.

[sartorias]

Book title: Dreaming Cows . . .

[asakiyume]

It would make a fabulous picture book!

[elbren]

also! a steer trained to do a job is an ox

[asakiyume]

Yes! Great definition ;-)

[noachoc]

You can tell how old a cow is by counting its spots.

[asakiyume]

This makes perfect sense and really OUGHT to be true (for cows with spots, anyway!)

[noachoc]

Cows without spots are immortal if not killed by an outside force.

[asakiyume]

(Provisional) immortality for the solid-color cows! Excellent!

[adore]

Any fake cow facts you'd care to add?

The cow that jumped over the moon was a real cow and that really happened, and it was able to leap over the moon because the moon was setting.

[asakiyume]

Right! When it gets low enough you can just step over it!

[kore]

Heh I'm expecting the TLT fans to jump in here with "Cows enjoy sunsets! Cows smile!"

[asakiyume]

I'm so out of touch! Tell me what TLT stands for?

[kore]

Aww sorry! The Locked Tomb series, so far comprising Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, and Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. They're total vegemite books (like, either you vibe with them or can't stand the books, the author or people who read them, LOL) and I adore them.

[asakiyume]

Ah, got it got it! I haven't read them myself, but several of my kids have (or have read at least the first two), and they've all loved them ^_^

[kore]

They're REALLY good. The first one is like a locked murder room mystery but on a very Gothy planet with bone magic, and then the second one revisits the first and turns it entirely on its head and goes totally meta, and then the third one is even wilder than that. They're almost like puzzle books but with great characterization and suspense.

[asakiyume]

They sound great! I have avoided them because LONG and because I thought I wasn't into the whole necromancy thing, but seeing as I ended up adoring Saint Death's Daughter, maybe that objection is off the table....

[kore]

I am the biggest wuss ever (I mean, I wimped out on Library at Hellebore after three pages) and these books didn't gross me out at all. I think the necromancy/skeleton magic stuff is more metaphorical than anything else.

[asakiyume]

Okay--onto the To-Read list they go!

[kore]

Aww, you might not like them! A lot of people don't! But I think you can typically tell whether you are along for the ride early on, heh. Although with the first book I might give it a couple of chapters even if you're not getting into it, because the opening setting isn't where the rest of the book takes place and that's pretty important.

[sovay]

--I have a kind of moo I use only with my calves. It's called the lullaby moo

I would like that one to be true.

(It is a little known fact that cow spots drift like clouds over the course of their lives.)

[asakiyume]

Drifting cow spots ~~~~~~~ for the win ~~~~~~~~~~

[squirrelitude]

Oh yeah, my partner and I were just talking about the linguistics of this two days ago!

I maintain that "cow" actually *is* the generic singular, but only in some situations, and for people who don't have any experience with livestock. (Like me.)

It's also interesting to note that "duck" and "goose" refer to either female or sex-unspecified (as opposed to drake and gander). "Chicken" is a little different, in that it usually makes people think of hens, not roosters. But either way, females are the unmarked category for livestock birds! And I wonder if that used to be the case for cattle as well.

Sheep is sex-unspecified, and goat *seems* to be, but "goat" actually comes from the term for she-goat...

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I was thinking about chickens: how even though we have "hen" and "rooster" (or "cock" if you're British) as the sex-specified terms, we default to thinking of "chicken" as equaling hen, not rooster.

It's interesting to think of cases with domesticated animals where that's *not* the case: horses, for instance. We have stallion and mare if we want to specify, but when you say "horse" you can mean either.

With poultry, the females are more useful to humans, as they both produce eggs and can be eaten in their own right. Roosters can be eaten, but they don't produce eggs. Horses are useful regardless of their sex. Cattle can go either way: if raised for milk production, then the females are more useful. If raised for beef, then males (neutered) are what's wanted. I feel like maybe that has a connection with what the unmarked term is.

[squirrelitude]

Yeah, I feel like the egg/milk situation has to be it.

[zdenka]

Cow facts! How delightful!

Baby calves can climb trees, but adult cows are too heavy.

[asakiyume]

Those calves, scrambling in the branches, having a wonderful time! Their parents look up fondly, remembering their own childhoods.

[yamamanama]

You can always use their binomial name Bos taurus.

[asakiyume]

True!

And if you say it BOSS Taurus, it has a very tough sound to it, too.