Have you ever stopped along side a road where there are cows, and noticed that no matter what they are doing they will stop and look back at you? Ever marvel at the unflinching stare of wonderment from... a cow? This has been something I have noticed a lot more than with any other domestic animal.
Recently in my driving around and my desire to collect photos for my future blogs, I pull over on a rural road somewhere and take a photo of cows.
It occured to me after I had done this a few times that no matter the location or breed, the cows all seemed to respond the same serious way. One or more of the herd will stop eating, look over at you and just stare.
You can be 500 yards away and they just look at you with one of those thousand yard unflinching stares. It is not a piercing or aggressive stare by any means, but more like a deliberate stare with a touch of wonderment. It seems to me that they are really serous about being cows.
It is as if they look over at you and are saying "So I am a cow, what are you stopping for?" or perhaps "I see you, and know you are looking at me. What do you want?" Whatever they are thinking, I guess we can only speculate. However, it does seem interesting to me that some will look without moving or shifting position for as long as you stop and look at them.
Horses do not seem to do this. I have photographed horses many times, and it seems quite the opposite
with them. Sometimes you have to wait quite awhile for a horse or even a sheep to look at you. They do not seem as interested, if you can call it 'interest', as the cows seem to be in the goings on of the rural photographer.
Perhaps cows are expecting me to run across the field and perform some kind of strange cattle mutilation on them or something. Or maybe they are just so serious about what they are doing that they are annoyed at being bothered, much less looked at.
Anyway, I just thought I would mention it. Cows seem to have a somewhat serious stare when they see someone stop. If you do not believe me, try it sometime and see what happens. I'll bet you will experience the same thing, and I will also bet that it never occured to you to question it.
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