If you spend as much time watching animal videos on YouTube as we do, you’ve likely seen some clips of dairy cows gleefully emerging the barn after a long winter, bounding through the fields with joy. Yes, just like humans, cows jump around to express their emotions (but really, who was doubting that?)
“We can certainly interpret it as positive excitement,” says Anne Marie de Passille, a Canadian researcher who studies the play behavior of cows. “Can it be joy? Who knows how to identify joy in cows? We have a hard time identifying it in humans,” she jokes.
Photo by Michael Hudelist/AFP/Getty Images
Rebecca Haley-Park
Rebecca Haley-Park is culture's former editor and resident stinky cheese cheerleader. A native New Englander, she holds a BFA in creative writing from University of Maine at Farmington.
