▲ A cow with a picture of the snow on the hip


In Africa, where lions and other beasts are struggling with attacking livestock, a picture of an eye was painted on the buttocks of cows, a study found that lion attacks were significantly reduced.

The research team, including Dr. Tracey Rogers, associate professor of evolution and ecology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, has conducted research over four years in the Okavango Delta region in northwestern Botswana, Africa. ) Announced in the latest issue.

This area is registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a rich ecosystem, and wildlife is protected. However, large predators such as lions and leopards frequently attack livestock in the vicinity, causing conflict with residents.

The research team focused on the fact that there were cases where feline animals such as lions and leopards attacking livestock hunted by surprise and gave up hunting just by making eye contact with a target.

An experiment was conducted to determine whether the effect of preventing attacks was effected by drawing eyes on both butts of the cow, which is suffering the most damage from a lion's attack.

The experiment was conducted with 2,61 animals in 14 groups.

Each group was divided into three groups before grazing, with snow drawings and cross marks on each of the two groups, while the other group was left unmarked.

They were grazing in nearly the same area and exposed virtually the same risk.

As a result, within a period of nearly four years, 683 cows with eye paintings had no dead in a lion attack, while 15 of 835 cows without any paintings were sacrificed.

Four of the 543 cows marked with a cross were attacked and killed.

This was accepted as a result of supporting that a lion caught by a prey gave up hunting.

In particular, it was accepted as an unexpected result that a cow with only a simple cross, not eyes, was less attacked than a cow without any drawing.

The research team said through'The Conversation', a medium that publishes expert contributions, "It is common to use eye shapes in many animal groups such as butterflies, fish, amphibians, and birds. "No," he said. "The results of this study are the first to show that eye shape can deter large mammalian predators."

However, the research team pointed out that further research is needed to see if snow drawings will be effective even when there are no so-called'sacrificial sheep' in the herd that the lions in the herd could use as prey by drawing snow pictures on all cattle.

In the long run, even when a lion gets used to the fake snow painted on a cow's butt, he admitted that it was unclear whether it would be effective.

(Photo = Bobby-Jo, Courtesy of The Coversation, Yonhap News)