Cow's noses are windows into their moods

Scientist have recently found that a cow's nasal temperature can easily tell about its mood and how it feels.

The World Animal Protection (WAP) organisation examined 13 cows by stroking the animals to put them in a calm and relaxed state before they measured their temperature and analysed them, the Daily Express reported.

The researchers told that emotions like stress, fear and frustration can easily be judged for a cow through its nose temperature, but only till the breakthrough point.

Gemma Carder, a researcher informed that in case if the nasal temperature of a cow drops then its ear posture will then determine their mood, such as hanging ears shows that they are relaxed, whereas upright ears are the sign of high stress.

Helen Proctor, a lead researcher of WAP expressed that understanding how animals express their positive emotions was an important area of focus for animal welfare science, but unfortunately it has widely been neglected.

The WAP authorities said that they did the research so that they could monitor how the cows are being treated in the farms, and now they hope that it could help them raise awareness of the benefits for pasture-based farming rather than intense dairy farms.

The study is published in the Physiology and Behaviour journal.