I enjoyed this NPR story about power lines and cows mostly because it created an amusing mental image of disorganized bovines. Apparently, cows have an internal magnetic compass — something once thought to be exclusive to animals like bats and rodents. This compass keeps cows aligned toward magnetic north or south while they’re resting or grazing, a tendency shared with deer.

But when cows munch or nap under high-voltage power lines, something gets messed up. A team researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany used Google Earth to observe animals under or near power lines. Instead of neat, linear cattle, the animals aligned in random directions. That is unless the power lines ran east-west, in which case the cows mustered in that direction.

I’m not only fascinated that cows can sense magnetic fields, but that power lines can change the Earth’s magnetic field — at least on a local level. Do the electric and magnetic fields (EMF) from high-voltage lines affect us, too?