What do you get from staring at a Google Earth image of peaceful cattle? Nothing less than the surprising conclusion that cattle orient the position of their bodies according to Earth’s magnetic field, German scientists reported.

The findings, which will appear in the Thursday edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, depict a tendency among cattle to orient their bodies north-south.

According to Sabine Begall and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen, the animals orient their bodies to magnetic north whether they are grazing or resting. The conclusion was drawn after studying the photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from all over the world. It appears that two out of three animals adopt this position.

The same study reveals a similar behavior in red and roe deer, discovered by Czech scientists. They found that these animals orient their heads northward when grazing or resting.

“Our findings open horizons for the study of magnetoreception in general and are of potential significance for applied ethology (husbandry, animal welfare),” the study says. “They challenge neuroscientists and biophysics to explain the proximate mechanisms.”

So far, observations in the field have shown that cattle stand perpendicular to the sun on cold, sunny days, especially in the morning, to gain heat, and orient parallel with strong winds during winter to minimize heat loss.

The recent Google Earth observations were made across the globe, under diverse factors such as wind, sun or temperature. The alignment did not appear to be influenced by any of these climatic conditions, which led scientists to the conclusion that the animals' position is influenced by the magnetic field of Earth.

Previous studies have shown that diverse animals, including representatives of six vertebrate classes, use the magnetic field for special orientation.