Spring in the Hills II by John Hulsey, 5 x 7, oil painting.

Recently, scientists at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany discovered that cattle and other large animals tend to organize themselves toward the magnetic poles. They made this discovery by spending six months studying hundreds of Google Earth satellite images of cattle and deer on six continents—observing more than 8,000 cows and 3,000 deer.

They noted that the cattle did not orient toward true north, which they could have done using the position of the sun, and the alignment effect disappeared near high-voltage power lines, which would have overpowered the relatively weak influence of the earth's magnetic field. No one knows exactly why cattle have this tendency, but it may have evolved to help them navigate during migrations, similar to the way birds and whales can navigate magnetically.

Ann and I often wander the fields near our studios when plein air painting, often taking the cows and horses around us as our subject. They seem to pose so picturesquely for us whenever we set our sights on them. While it never occurred to me to notice their north-south alignment, I have often marveled at how perfectly they seem to be distributed across the grassland. I never feel as though I need to redesign my outdoor painting layout of the herd to make a better picture.

Madame by Ann Trusty, 5 x 7, oil painting.			The First Hot Day by John Hulsey, 5 x 7, pastel painting.

This has happened so often that I really have wondered if cows are tuned in to some kind of cosmic fractal equation that describes the optimum spacing for cattle in a pasture! Or perhaps they obey as-yet undiscovered rules of cosmic choreography. What if, like a Gary Larsen cartoon, the cows are actually performing a secret ballet upon the landscape to music only they can hear—a kind of bovine performance art? It can seem like a crazy and funny idea, but then it took us 10,000 years to realize these same animals were pointing to the magnetic poles! There's just a lot we don't know.

No one knows why humans have felt compelled to create works of art since the dawn of time, either. But we just do. Perhaps we too, as artists, are also performing in the cosmic dance to a "muse-ic" only we can hear. So far, the creative impulse has proven to be scientifically unquantifiable. Nevertheless, I always point south when I paint in my studio—does that mean anything?

One thing is for sure—the next time I'm out with the cows, I'm going to pay more attention. They may know something! For more great articles, please visit us on The Artist's Road.

--John & Ann

P.S. For more information on animals' magnetic sense, be sure to read the Scientific American January 2012 article by Davide Castelvecchi, "The Compass Within."

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