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Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores
- fendy3002 6y agoFirst black and white spots to reduce mosquito bites, now artificial eyespots to reduce predation. By the end of decade, the cattles will look like mutants from a glance. It's not bad though.
- ISL 6y agoWe are all mutants.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoIn fact, you are descendant from the original mutant(s)
- NortySpock 6y agohttps://www.popsci.com/muscular-animals-babies-myostatin/ https://www.popsci.com/muscular-animals-babies-myostatin/ We already have mutant cattle, and dogs, and mice.
- xenonite 6y agoZebra stripes reduced biting by horse-flies, indeed: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0210831 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- rossjudson 6y agoEven better: Eyespots with built in lasers.
- varjag 6y agoEverything is better with googly eyes on.
- Ccecil 6y agoI live in an area with native Cougar and Bear. Local hunters told me a couple decades ago the best thing to do in the woods when you are alone is to put your sunglasses on the back of your head. They explained that large cats typically attack from behind. When the glasses are on the back of your head it confuses the cat as to which direction you are looking and makes them hesitate (therefore less likely) to attack you. It always made sense to me. This study seems to reinforce their advice.
- advaita 6y agoIIRC, In Sundarban Delta (India/Bangladesh) people put on masks on the back of the head for similar reasons. EDIT: Yeap, here's NYT article from 1989 https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/05/science/face-masks-fool-the-bengal-tigers.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/05/science/face-masks-fool-t...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sircastor 6y agoThis reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin, having read about this practice, makes his own mask to protect himself from Hobbes' pouncing. [1] https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/10/23 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/10/23
- tome 6y agoThat's cool. The comic was about one year after the newspaper, so perhaps it got into the public consciousness during that period!
- erikig 6y agoRelated: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/10/25 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/10/25 The outcome of Calvin's "experiment"
- ravoori 6y ago
- andy_ppp 6y agoSurely predators will eventually learn that eyes on the back of animals are to be ignored?
- hanniabu 6y agoWhich side is the back?
- emiliobumachar 6y ago"Eventually" may take a long time.
- tlholaday 6y ago> ... eyes on the back of animals ... Q: Cubs! If you attack a horned prey animal from the front, what will happen to you? A: You will be gored. Q: Cubs! How do we know which end of the animal is the back? A: The back end has no eyes. Q: Cubs! What happens to us if we do not pay attention to prey eyes? A: We will not reproduce.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoThe back ends tend to be a bit kick-y. Is that a quote?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lukas099 6y agoRemember that every adaptation comes with a tradeoff. This adaptation may require more complex brains which cost space and/or energy.
- tejtm 6y agokinda of like avoiding any opportunist predator spammer, hacker, advertising ... If you do anything chances are really good they will just move one to something that is not.
- ping_pong 6y agoWon't predators learn eventually not to get fooled by that?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xu_ituairo 6y agoDo you mean at an evolutionary time scale or within their life times?
- lukas099 6y agoI think both would occur, as long as the particular predator has a sophisticated enough brain to learn this. On an evolutionary timescale, there would probably be an arms race of sorts leading to an equilibrium of predator/prey phenotypes.
- commonturtle 6y agoDepends. If there isn't a strong enough selection pressure (there is plenty of wild prey, they only rarely attack cattle) then they wouldn't learn to ignore the eyespots for many generations.
- NegativeLatency 6y agoThe eyes were painted on the cattle's butts. Went looking for images, the article did not disappoint: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0/figures/1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0/figures/1
- marmshallow 6y agoWow, they don’t look very real at all.
- agency 6y agoThose predators must be feeling foolish
- smiley1437 6y agoWhoa!! Went in expecting a couple of crude round spots for eyes Got ACTUAL EYES with the whites, iris\pupil, darkened rims, even a suggestion of tear ducts
- Havoc 6y agoThat is indeed terrifying. I can see how predators might have second thoughts
- mcv 6y agoI wonder how it affects their fellow cattle, though. It must be weird to see your colleagues staring at you with their butts.
- oopsiforgot7 6y agoSounds like adversarial patches
- jungletime 6y agoIn India, Tigers attack and eat people on a regular basis. Villagers wear specially made face masks on the back of the head to confuse and dissuade attacks from the back. There is evidence that prehistoric cats preyed on humans enough to have evolved specialized incisor teeth for crushing human sculls.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoI’m assuming they’re a protected species or firearms of sufficient caliber are not prevalent in these villages?
- saddestcatever 6y agoHigh caliber firearms could be cost prohibitive, or simply illegal in that jurisdiction. Alternatively, firearms are only as useful as you are aware and capable of reacting...
- ihaveajob 6y agoA handgun won't be of much use if you're jumped on from behind by a beast 3 times your weight and many times your strength.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoIf pouncing on villagers routinely resulted in catching a 12ga slug (buddy system when doing high risk things will do a pretty good job of guaranteeing that) then the tigers that live long enough to pass on their genes would be the ones that don't make a habit of pouncing on villagers. It only takes a few generations for animals to become afraid of or lose their fear of humans. You see this in all sorts of species when hunting pressure is applied/removed.
- macintux 6y agoI suspect you’d find that a single untrained human, even well-armed, isn’t always sufficient to kill a tiger. So rather than avenge your buddy and improve the tiger gene pool, you’d get killed too.
- elliekelly 6y ago> Although no known contemporary mammals display anti-predator eyespots, the effects of eye patterns and gaze have been shown to modify behaviour in this Class including in humans, domestic and wild canids, and domestic cats. Is there a reason mammals don't/haven't evolved this way? With cattle and other domestic animals I can understand that humans have been knowingly and unknowingly interfering with evolution so I suppose that isn't surprising. But why haven't deer or bunnies, for example, evolved to have white patches on their rear ends the way insects and birds have?
- enchiridion 6y agoFawns are covered in white spots, could that be why? As for other animals, the RNG probably just didn't spin that way.
- easymodex 6y agoI suppose if they all had it, noone would be fooled anymore.
- headsupernova 6y agoThat argument would seem to apply to insects with eye markings as well, so can't be correct here.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- awb 6y agoMaybe there's not enough evolutionary pressure from predation to necessitate it. For deer and rabbits, they seem to be optimizing for speed and agility which makes other deterrence modes less necessary.
- JoshTko 6y agoAn eye pattern only deters ambush predators and the pattern could make them more vulnerable to other predators.
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- TheCoreh 6y agoInteresting. If that's the case, I wonder why no large mammals evolved these patterns like for example, butterflies did.
- londons_explore 6y agoIt might be one of those things that fools predators for a few generations, and then starts having the opposite effect. Lions learn to look for the massive eyes, cos they're the tastiest bit of a cow...
- kindatrue 6y ago<goes to buy Googly Eye Glasses to wear on the back of my head to avoid mountain lions>
- switchbak 6y agoI've heard years ago that wearing googly eyes on the back of your helmet is a good way to cut the chance of a cougar attack on a bike. Just like you I think I'll go grab some today!
- cwkoss 6y agoI wonder if googly eyes on the back of a bike helmet would reduce the chance that you get rear-ended by a car as well.
- inetsee 6y agoI can honestly say that this is the most unusual article I have ever seen on Hacker News.
- Jugurtha 6y agoI remember seeing a documentary where they showed fish having "eye" spots on their rear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foureye_butterflyfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foureye_butterflyfish. I found it such a hack.
- fgblanch 6y agoI'm wondering if the same effect applies to humans. For example adding pictures of staring managers/bosses in offices, painting faces/eyes reduce certain behavior. A cool experiment would be paintings of police men reducing graffiti
- closeparen 6y agoAuthoritarian regimes seem to be into portraits of the glorious leader "watching" everywhere.
- skummetmaelk 6y agoPosters of eyes in cafeterias make it more likely for people to clean up after themselves https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513810001224 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...
- notJim 6y agoIt does, the article mentions that painted eyes can deter bicycle theft, for example. There are more examples in the article.
- londons_explore 6y agoA shop in England, 'poundland', which is quite a target for low value casual thieves, has a lifesize mural of a policeman in uniform at each store. Don't know if it works, but they must at least think it does.
- emmelaich 6y agoNot exactly the same but that's a symbol in The Great Gatsby. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoLooks like the cross marked cattle faired better than unmarked as well (though not as well as those with false eyes). I wonder the significance of that.
- svat 6y ago“Should animals have more eyes? Why don't they? Onion Science Editor Raef Gillis wonders.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUOAZisYQjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUOAZisYQjM
- brzozowski 6y agoReminds me of the watching-eye effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching-eye_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching-eye_effect
- laretluval 6y agoThe Eye of Sauron is a great motivator.
- swayvil 6y agoIt works in stores to prevent shoplifting too. And to keep people from trying to buy cigarettes while underage. Eyes are magic. Pattern recognition that reaches down deep, maybe past the reptilian. Getting looked at can cause anxiety. Maybe this adds to the appeal of masks.
- ihaveajob 6y agoIndeed, there are lots of stories about the effect of eye contact in human behavior, charisma and persuasion. Sam Harris has a few stories about this, and [writes a bit in this post](https://samharris.org/look-into-my-eyes/ https://samharris.org/look-into-my-eyes/). Try to catch Osho, the guru in the video, blinking. He doesn't, he barely moves his eyelids 1/4 of the way down once a minute or so. It's fascinating.
- trhway 6y ago>reaches down deep, maybe past the reptilian it goes straight to the amygdala - the "lizard" or the "fight or flight" brain - see the brain scans in the link below for example. It is very short connection path from retina, something like right past the primary visual cortex, right beyond the last layers of simple/automatic pattern matching. http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-solo-climber http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor... > Getting looked at can cause anxiety. not surprisingly as it is usually the last thing one see before being attacked, so no wonder that amygdala starts to fire well before your conscious comes up with upper level decision whether there is any danger.
- m463 6y agoYou when you're in the tool section of home depot and that little chime plus tv display beeps at you? I'm uncertain if it prevents shoplifting, but it sure pisses off people like me who were browsing and prevents actual shopping.
- DonHopkins 6y agoMaybe painting a gaping artificial mouth snarling with long pointy fangs on a cow's butt would help too?
- not2b 6y agoI'm kind of thinking that this wouldn't scale. If some of the cattle have eye spots and others in the same area don't, the predators might be intimidated, or they might just say "that's weird, I'll hunt something else". But if all of the cattle have eye spots added, the cougars might just think "f it, I'm hungry".
- ShinTakuya 6y agoMy thoughts exactly. It'd be good if multiple separate herds could be tested, but that would get pretty expensive.
- m463 6y agoThen just paint large teeth under the eyes.
- odomojuli 6y agoInteresting. From what I understand, an 'eye' pattern can be computed by taking variations of the standard map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_map Cellular automata and reaction-diffusion is well observed in biology as morphogenesis. I'm curious, is there a color-specific advantage to monochromatic patterns that can be explained by theory?
- dash2 6y agoAnyone who’s read Babar the Elephant knows that trick :-) https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplecrop1000/public/assets/images/085-1-2_0.jpg?itok=NlqjJpxi https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplec...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoI bet if you painted a picture of Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) on the cow, not only would the carnivores not eat the cows, they would probably bring the cows food.
- alach11 6y agoIt’s interesting to relate this to adversarial attacks on computer vision systems. Something “low-tech” like this that works on mammal predators might protect against predator drones one day.
- ncmncm 6y agoThe really surprising thing about this is that it took so long for people to think of it. People have been painting eyes on boats for millennia (for no practical reason we know about--maybe our ancestors had a problem now passed?) and wearing fake eyes on their own backsides for decades, but painting cattle never came up. Even more novel is the idea, suggested in the conclusion, of using eyespots to protect depleted predator species against retribution by armed herdkeepers.
- three_seagrass 6y agoWhat's more crazy about this is that the 25 day survival rate for these cattle is only 98%.
- m0zg 6y agoThese are basically adversarial techniques to take advantage of weaknesses in a biological neural net. Love it.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoWow, eyes on your butt saves your butt. I'm surprised that predators would not have figured this out and started ignoring them but apparently 100% survival rate. Definitely an improvement. I wonder if you could make highly durable vinyl stick on eyes that would allow you to just apply them once a year. Put prism covers and you could make them blink as the cow moved like those cards that flip between two images based on the angle.
- kebman 6y agoSeagulls are real rascals where I live. The rude little buggers will grab your lunch right out of your hands, especially if you sit down, and become unobservant for a second. But here's a neat trick. Just look them in the eyes. This will make them really uneasy. An informal test is to put your lunch down on the ground while you stare into their hungry eyes. Usually they won't dare to grab it, or they'll stay insecure longer, before making an attempt. Some will just straight out fly off, once you start to give them the evil eye. And about that, another great way to get rid of birds, is to start walking around them like someone stalking them for dinner. They won't stay long if you give off predator vibes.
- sliken 6y agoI was amused by a podcast I listened to where some guy delivered donuts and a pay on the honor system coffee can. He found that drawing a pair of obviously fake eyes on the collection box significantly increased the amount of money he received per donut. So apparently even humans are sensitive to obviously fake eyes.
- pvaldes 6y agoThe reduction in predation by large carnivores masks the fact that african large carnivores are being systematically wipped. And, well... most large carnivores hunt at night. I think that white eyespots just would make preys more visible in the dusk and dawn, when the "90%" of predation events happen.