Believe it or not, cows are not all meaningless mooing and slow blinks. A study suggests that these animals communicate with each other about how they feel through their vocal expressions. Cows may not be the most intelligent creatures out there, but they are some of the compassionate, and humans must learn to respect this.Â
The study was conducted last year by researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia. [1] According to the paper, the study recorded the âfirst evidence of cows maintaining individual vocalization,â where they alter their vocal pitches according to their emotions and moods.
The study was led by Alexandra Green, a Ph.D. student from the universityâs School of Life and Environmental Science. For five months, she studied a herd of 18 Holstein-Friesian heifers and progressively collected 333 samples of cow vocalizations. With help from her Italian and French colleagues, Green was able to analyze the voice samples and determine that cows maintain contact with each other using individual vocal notes. By altering the pitch of their moos, they can express a wide range of emotions such as sadness, excitement, distress, grief, arousal, and so on.

The researchers believe that the findings from the study would help farmers improve cattle rearing practices and understand their animals better.
âWe found that cattle vocal individuality is relatively stable across different emotionally loaded farming contexts,â Green said. âWe hope that through gaining knowledge of these vocalizations, farmers will be able to tune into the emotional state of their cattle, improving animal welfare.â
Read: Video Reveals âDeeply Disturbingâ Treatment Of Cows Killed For Leather
It spans beyond mother and child interaction
Greenâs study was supported by a Research Training Program Scholarship granted by the Australian government. The vocal analysis was conducted in Saint-Etienne, France, with assistance from two of the most renowned bio-acousticians in the field, Professor David Reby and Dr. Livio Favaro.
Published in Scientific Reports in December 2019, Greenâs study reported that the vocal lowing that has always been observed in mothers and young is also a communication tactic used by the entire herd. [2] They maintain these characteristics throughout their lives and would often express their emotions when they are denied food for too long, isolated from the group, or during periods of arousal.
âCows are gregarious, social animals. In one sense it isnât surprising they assert their individual identity throughout their life and not just during mother-calf imprinting,â Green said. âBut this is the first time we have been able to analyze voice to have conclusive evidence of this trait.â
Greenâs research has received positive acknowledgment from authorities in the field and it will be incorporated into her doctorate.
âAliâs research is truly inspired. It is like she is building a Google translate for cows,â said Associate Professor Cameron Clark, Greenâs academic supervisor.
Another significant study in 2018 reported that many animals communicate with each other just as humans do by engaging in distinct two-way conversations. [3] Human communication has always stood because we practice turn-taking, where one person speaks, the other listens, and then replies afterward. Researchers found that several animal communications from elephant rumbling to mole rat chirping are performed patiently in turns as these animals communicate.Â