Science Friday - To This Neuroscientist, Cows Are Like Puppies

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

If you’ve ever seen a cute cow video on social media, you might notice they seem to have a lot in common with dogs. They can wag their tails, they love to gobble down tasty treats, and if you’re lucky, they might flop over for a nice belly or neck scratch.Cows are clearly emotional animals, but how smart are they exactly? That’s the question that neuroscientist and author Dr. Gregory Berns had when he and his wife moved from Atlanta to the Georgia countryside in 2020, and started raising cows of their own. And to better understand them, he applied his years of experience researching the brains of animals, like dogs and dolphins.He joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about his new book, Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship And A Scientist’s Journey Into The Secret World Of Cows.Read an excerpt of Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship And A Scientist’s Journey Into The Secret World Of Cows.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

What do we know about the brains of cows? They surprise me every day. They show a level of social bonding that I haven't seen with my dogs. It's Wednesday, September 11th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Dee Petershmet. If you've ever seen a cute cow video on social media, you might notice that they seem to have a lot in common with dogs. They can wag their tails.

They love to gobble down some tasty treats. And if you're lucky, they can flop over for a nice belly or neck scratch. They're clearly curious and emotional animals, but how smart are they exactly? Neuroscientist Dr. Gregory Burns explored this question after moving to rural Georgia and started to raise cows of his own, applying his years of experience studying animal brains. Here's guest host and science journalist Sophie Bushwick talking with Dr. Burns about his new book, Cow Puppy, an unexpected friendship and a scientist journey into the secret world of cows. Dr. Burns, welcome back to Science Friday. Hey, Sophie, great to be here.

So I love the title of the book, Cow Puppy. Can you tell us the story behind that word and how you got started raising cows? Yeah. I'm fond of the title, too. So I ended up on this farm back in 2020 and without kind of a clear idea of exactly what I was going to do other than I had this big notion that I was going to grow vegetables and live sustainably. And of course, I would have to have animals because being a dog person and general animal person, what's a farm without animals. And I didn't know exactly what I was going to get and pretty soon found myself with a bull and two cows,

which I got primarily just to manage the grass because we had all these pastures and the idea kind of morphed into this, well, the cows will eat the grass, I'll collect their manure, we'll compost it, then we'll turn it into the food garden, and then we'll grow all these great fruits and vegetables and, you know, we'll eat some, we'll sell some at the farmer's market, and it would just be wonderful. So they would contribute to having a sustainable farm? That's right. So my original idea was just to kind of use them as biological reactors. Not as food products themselves, but just to help with the farm management or partners in the enterprise, shall we say. Got it. And so I can't kind of overemphasize how little I knew about

cows, which was probably about the same as what most people knew, which is you see them from the side of the road, and they seem kind of almost inert and sedate and pretty easygoing, at least until you get up close to them and you realize how big most of them are. But that aside, the cows turned out to be pregnant, and the person I got them from dropped them off and informed me that I would have a surprise very soon, which was, in fact, about two weeks after I got them, when our first calf was born. So talk about rapid learning curve, then that kind of throws you into it.

And then the other one calved about two weeks later. And once that happened, I kind of fell in love with them. I mean, partially just from watching them, how they behaved with each other, just watching how the mamas tended to their babies and how the babies latched on and bonded so quickly and how fast they grew up.

And frankly, how playful these calves were. And so one in particular turned out to be very playful and very affectionate and kind of very outgoing, both, you know, with the other cows, but also with me. And so I kind of jokingly said, he's, he behaves like a puppy. So I started calling my cow puppy. And a lot of your past research involved studying animal brains and asking questions like, do dogs feel emotions the same ways we do? What level of intelligence do they have? As a researcher, what were your initial big questions when you started living with cows? Well, I hadn't had kind of too much thought or experience into what cows, you know, might experience.

I mean, we have an advantage with dogs in the sense that, one, they've evolved with us for a long period of time. But also, many people have firsthand experience where dogs share our lives, you know, they sleep at our feet or sometimes they sleep in our beds. And so we kind of come to understand their body language and how they behave. And we recognize their emotions. And much of my previous work was kind of studying the neural basis of some of those feelings that they had. And so I didn't really know what to expect with cows because I hadn't had any firsthand experience. And yet the more I observed them, the more similar I saw them to be to dogs in many ways, that they, you know, it became very clear that they, that first off, they have a capacity for

emotion. In fact, in many ways, they're more demonstrative than, than dogs are and how they show affection both with each other and with me. And the difference with the cows is that any relationship that I formed with them was kind of much more hard earned than with dogs. Because I say that dogs are easy. They kind of come out ready to be everyone's friends. But cows, of course, come from a very different evolutionary trajectory where they evolved from animals that were preyed upon and have kind of this natural wariness of anything that comes into their environment. And so when they accept you into their group, it's really special and they're frankly very loyal once they do. And you found early in your cow journey that there's not a lot of existing research on cow intelligence or social behavior.

What do you make of that? There's been a fair amount of research. around cattle, both beef cattle and dairy cattle, but the vast majority of it is from a production standpoint. So researchers have looked at things that produce more milk or put on more weight for cows. And so it's kind of all being geared towards that. And there just hasn't been the amount of attention given to what we now do with dogs especially and trying to really understand what their cognition is like. How do cows think? And what is their emotional capacity and how do they represent these feelings that they have. And if that was studied more, do you think it would be helpful for understanding animal

intelligence more broadly? I think every species we look at, we have to kind of take on its own, if you will. So I think this has been kind of a flaw in a lot of animal research in the past, mainly kind of coming from the top down where we always tend to resort to human metrics of intelligence. And this, of course, is problematic when you're studying other species because, you know, until we start probing it, who's to say what it means to be an intelligent cow or a not-so-intelligent cow? And why should it even be surprising that you might have some that are smarter than each other? So we have to map these things out. What surprising things did you learn

about cow's brains? And how do they compare to human brains? Well, so if you look at a cow's brain, and I have using MRI, probably the most surprising thing about it is, is how folded it is, or what we call gyrophication. And so, you know, we know with human brains, they're very folded, and everyone has seen pictures of that. A dog brain in comparison is not nearly as folded. And yet the cow, which most people would not consider as intelligent as a dog, even though that I think that's a silly comparison, and yet the cow has kind of this more folded, more

gyrofrived cortex. Now, what that means is a matter of debate. You know, some people for decades have been saying that the more folded a brain is, the more tissue is in there, and the more capacity for different types of intellectual and cognitive function there is. That may be. You know, I have found them to be more intelligent than dogs in many ways. Yeah. Can you get into, in what ways were they more intelligent? So I think the most dramatic, demonstration of intelligence that I had is with something called the mirror test. So the mirror test is perhaps one of the most famous tests of supposedly self-awareness in the animal world. And the idea is you put a mirror in front of a person or an animal or an infant and do they recognize

their reflection as themselves. This is a huge deal in science. Perhaps with the exception of humans, perhaps only chimpanzees and maybe dolphins have demonstrated that they understand that the reflection is them. A dog, for example, typically either ignores their reflection or barks at it. They show no recognition or even frankly how to use a mirror. We take this for granted. You look at a mirror, you know that the things in the mirror are reflections and represent things behind you, not necessarily on the other side of the mirror. So what I did, and nobody had done this before,

was I put up a giant mirror in my pasture. I lashed it to the fence, and I just left it there for months because you have to give animals enough time to explore and learn at their own pace. And initially, the cows were just, they were entranced by it. They would spend many hours,

you know, just staring at the reflections, and sometimes they would look behind it to try to figure it out. And then what was amazing, over time, several of them seemed to figure out how to use the mirror in a very functional way. When some other cow came up behind them while they were looking in the mirror and they saw that reflection, they understood to turn around and look behind them. Wow. Which to me is quite remarkable because I've never seen a dog do that.

And something else that I learned from your book is how cows use licking as a social behavior. Can you explain why licking is so important to them? Yeah, so, you know, this is not uncommon in the animal world. I mean, dogs lick, cats lick. But why they do it is a matter of debate. You know, some people say they do it to groom each other and get off parasites. But what cows do is they use it as a form of affection and social bonding. And so it's actually very interesting and very stereotypical when a cow wants to be licked.

they will kind of sidle up to another one. They'll put their head down a little bit, and then they'll waggle it from side to side, essentially saying, please lick me. And then the other one will start licking their neck, and then the first one might stretch out their head a little bit. And it actually mimics a position that calves do when they're nursing the utter from below. And it's what we call a neotenous behavior, which is a juvenile behavior that gets retained into adulthood, which turns out to be very common in animals as ways to show affection.

And I think the way to think about it is these are what some people have called soothing signals. They're a way that the animals calm themselves and reinforce their bonds with each other. And they'll do it to me too. I'd also like to look at the downside of cattle. We know that cows produce a lot of the greenhouse gas methane through their burps and farts. And they also require a lot of resources. So a big chunk of agriculture and land in the U.S. is dedicated exclusively to growing grain and corn for cows to consume. You've spent a lot of time with cattle ranchers over the past few years.

What do you think are some ways that this system could be set up differently to reduce our environmental and ethical concerns? Yeah, it's a difficult problem because especially in the United States, our agricultural system, especially when it comes to meat is very centralized. So most people raising cattle tend to raise it on their farmland, and then when the animal gets to a certain weight, they sell it at auction, and then the animal gets shipped usually to the Midwest, where they're so-called finished on industrialized farms.

So part of the environmental impact is the original land that they're grazing, but also the environmental impact, of those large factory farms where they're finished in the last couple of weeks of their life, where they're fed large amounts of grain. Now, cows can eat grain, although that is not what they evolved to eat. They are ruminants, meaning they are evolved to eat grass, and they have very unique digestive systems that are well suited to that. And so when it comes to the methane emissions, for example,

it's definitely a case of what goes in, comes out. And so when you pump in a lot of these high value carbohydrates, the fermentation that happens in the process of the cow, that's what generates the methane. And so one way to mitigate that is stop feeding them grain. So, I mean, apart from changing the feed, I mean, all of this is driven by people's dietary habits. And so then, of course, probably the biggest thing that people can do is cut down on their consumption of meat. Something you write about as well is the way that these cows seem to have an

almost therapeutic effect when you spend extended amounts of time with them. What did you learn about that and the effect it also had on your neighbors? That's right. So as I said, I mean, my cows are here to help me manage the pasture. That was their original purpose. But as I fell in love with them and they fell in love with me, I found them to be very relaxing and grounding in a way that I hadn't found any other animal. And so what I started doing as kind of a daily routine is I would just sit down with them when they were lying down in the pasture, chewing their cud. Eventually, I was able just to sit with them and rest with them, lean against them, and just essentially meditate. And it was incredibly peaceful. And my neighbor, who has lived in the area for decades and had grown up with

cattle, saw me doing this. He saw me doing it with the bull who has horns. And so the bull, whose name is Ricky Bobby, would just kind of, he would roll over on his side and put his head in my lap and he'd let me scratch his belly. And my neighbor was just dumbfounded by this. He said, I'd never seen anything like this. So he started coming over. And then, And, you know, he invited his friends to come over and see it. And so kind of pretty soon we were holding cow therapy sessions. That's amazing. And just because you mentioned Ricky Bobby specifically, can you talk about how

Ricky Bobby's personality influenced his name? Yeah. So the original three, so he was the bull and then the two cows. And so we named the two females Lucy and Ethel from the old TV show, I Love Lucy. And so Ricky Bobby was then Ricky, so for Ricky Ricardo. But he turned out to have this very goofy personality where you bring out the food can and you shake a little bit of food. And he was like right at the front of the line sticking his tongue out. And so it reminded me more of the character Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights.

Ricky Bobby has several great quotes, but probably the one that's most relevant is if you ain't first, you're last. For Ricky Bobby, the human, that was the finish line in a NASCAR race. But for Ricky Bobby, the cow, it was first in line at the feed trough. Yes. And at this point, you've lived with these cows for about four years now. What surprised you about them over the years? And do you see them differently than before? They surprise me every day.

They show a level of social bonding. that I haven't seen with my dogs. We have anywhere from three to five dogs at any given time. And although the dogs coexist with each other generally peacefully, I would not ever have considered them good friends. They just kind of want parental attention most of the time. And the cows genuinely seem to care for each other. I see them groom each other and how they are so bonded as a unit.

sometimes when we have to do things to take care of them, like trimming hooves or we have to give them vaccinations and we have to take one out of the herd momentarily, that isolation is like the worst thing for them. More than any physical discomfort that they have, they cannot stand being separate from each other. And it's a testament to how social they are, but it's also kind of very touching. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this. And good luck with your farm. Oh, thank you and thank you for having me on the show again. Dr. Gregory Burns, professor at Emory University, and you can read an excerpt of his book at ScienceFriiday.com slash cowpuppie. And that's all the time we have for today. Lots of people help make the show

happen, including Kathleen Davis, Diana Plasker, Beth Ramney, Danielle Johnson, Santiago Flores. On tomorrow's episode, we'll figure out what an analysis of 2.5 billion-year-old rocks tells us about the history of the Earth's mantle. I'm SciFright producer, D. Peter Schmidt. See you then.