
Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores - dsr12
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0
======
Ccecil
I 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.

~~~
Waterluvian
Tangentially related: fighter jets do this too.

Interesting how universal these tricks seem to be.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_CF-18_Hornet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_CF-18_Hornet#/media/File:Canada_Joins_the_Fight_Against_ISIL_141030-F-MG591-642.jpg)

~~~
heleninboodler
Now I'm laughing at the idea that this was the purpose behind the WW2-era fake
teeth painted on fighter planes.

They really need a second study that paints big gnarly WW2 fighter teeth on
cows to see what effect it has.

~~~
shoo
No big gnarly teeth, but re: the sibling comments, searching "dazzle cows"
reveals
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figures?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223447)

sadly not genuine dazzle camo but in the ballpark

~~~
heleninboodler
That's neat and makes sense. I mean, aren't zebras basically "dazzle horses"?

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NegativeLatency
The 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)

~~~
Havoc
That is indeed terrifying. I can see how predators might have second thoughts

~~~
mcv
I wonder how it affects their fellow cattle, though. It must be weird to see
your colleagues staring at you with their butts.

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dash2
Anyone who’s read Babar the Elephant knows that trick :-)

[https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplec...](https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplecrop1000/public/assets/images/085-1-2_0.jpg?itok=NlqjJpxi)

------
jungletime
In 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
I’m assuming they’re a protected species or firearms of sufficient caliber are
not prevalent in these villages?

~~~
ihaveajob
A 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
If 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
I 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.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
You don't have to get them every time just often enough that they stop doing
it It's about making it statically much riskier for the tigers to misbehave,
not saving everyone.

~~~
macintux
Per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attack)
the majority who attack humans are infirm and desperate. Doubt taking them out
of the gene pool would do any long-term good.

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not2b
I'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
My thoughts exactly. It'd be good if multiple separate herds could be tested,
but that would get pretty expensive.

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elliekelly
> 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?

~~~
easymodex
I suppose if they all had it, noone would be fooled anymore.

~~~
headsupernova
That argument would seem to apply to insects with eye markings as well, so
can't be correct here.

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fendy3002
First 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
We are all mutants.

~~~
blaser-waffle
In fact, you are descendant from the original mutant(s)

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fgblanch
I'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

~~~
skummetmaelk
Posters of eyes in cafeterias make it more likely for people to clean up after
themselves
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513810001224)

------
varjag
Everything is better with googly eyes on.

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TheCoreh
Interesting. If that's the case, I wonder why no large mammals evolved these
patterns like for example, butterflies did.

~~~
londons_explore
It 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...

------
kebman
Seagulls 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.

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swayvil
It 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.

~~~
trhway
>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-
wor...](http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-
greatest-solo-climber)

> 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.

------
brzozowski
Reminds me of the watching-eye effect:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching-
eye_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching-eye_effect)

~~~
laretluval
The Eye of Sauron is a great motivator.

------
ncmncm
The 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.

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, 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.

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odomojuli
Interesting. 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?

------
sliken
I 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
The 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.

------
Jugurtha
I 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.

------
three_seagrass
What's more crazy about this is that the 25 day survival rate for these cattle
is only 98%.

------
kindatrue
<goes to buy Googly Eye Glasses to wear on the back of my head to avoid
mountain lions>

~~~
switchbak
I'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
I 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.

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svat
“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)

------
andy_ppp
Surely predators will eventually learn that eyes on the back of animals are to
be ignored?

~~~
tlholaday
> ... 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
The back ends tend to be a bit kick-y.

Is that a quote?

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inetsee
I can honestly say that this is the most unusual article I have ever seen on
Hacker News.

------
alach11
It’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.

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ryanmarsh
Looks 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.

------
DonHopkins
Maybe painting a gaping artificial mouth snarling with long pointy fangs on a
cow's butt would help too?

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oopsiforgot7
Sounds like adversarial patches

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ping_pong
Won't predators learn eventually not to get fooled by that?

~~~
xu_ituairo
Do you mean at an evolutionary time scale or within their life times?

~~~
lukas099
I 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.

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m0zg
These are basically adversarial techniques to take advantage of weaknesses in
a biological neural net. Love it.

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rossjudson
Even better: Eyespots with built in lasers.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
I 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.

