India’s love affair with the humble Indian cow is well known. It considers the cow as a sacred animal and worships it as Gau Mata (holy cow). Serving as an eco-system for rural India, the cow is best described by Ogden Nash as “of bovine ilk, one end is moo and the other milk”. But there are other indigenous uses of a cow as well – cow dung is used as a cooking fuel and for waterproofing walls and floors of rural houses, cow urine is considered an elixir of life and is used as a natural remedy for liver and heart conditions, etc.
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There are many ‘moo’ds of a cow – ranging from happy to agitated. And why won’t there be, after all, cows have feelings too – especially for grass! Most people assume that cows have five senses, but they are mistaken. Similar to humans, cows have six senses – they can feel pain and form relationships. The only difference is that they cannot speak like us. Emotions in animals were first described by Charles Darwin in 1872. In 2009, researchers at Newcastle University in UK interviewed 516 farmers, only to discover that farmers who named their cows, and hence treated them as individuals, got more milk from the animal than those who didn’t. In 2011, a researcher at The University of Northampton in UK suggested that cows have complex social and emotional lives. The research indicated that
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