Another story that avoids the Olympic 'O' word. You couldn't make it up.
Despite our double dip recession that's looking for its triple dip, there seems to be no shortage of money for pointless academic research projects.
The University of Exeter has got both DEFRA and independent milk industry funding for a study into the social skills and friend-making ability of cows.
The aim is to electronically tag a herd of cows and then to study their movement by satellite tracking over three years. This will help them to understand how cows make friends with other cows, develop those relationships, achieve boundless happiness and then increase their milk yield.
I'm not sure of the relationship between happiness and milk yield. But we do know that oxytocin, the milk releasing hormone has a direct effect on serotonin neurons in the brain. This could be a case of the tail wagging the cow. So much for the null hypothesis too.
On a comparative biology basis. Do women who are more sociable, with more friends have a higher milk yield? I don't think so.
Evidence That Oxytocin Exerts Anxiolytic Effects via Oxytocin Receptor Expressed in Serotonergic Neurons in Mice
Masahide Yoshida, Yuki Takayanagi, Kiyoshi Inoue, Tadashi Kimura, Larry J. Young, Tatsushi Onaka, and Katsuhiko Nishimori
The Journal of Neuroscience, 18 February 2009, 29(7): 2259-2271; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5593-08.2009
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