[HN Gopher] Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by la...
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Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores
Author : dsr12
Score : 193 points
Date : 2020-08-17 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| Jugurtha wrote:
| I remember seeing a documentary where they showed fish having
| "eye" spots on their rear:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foureye_butterflyfish. I found it
| such a hack.
| m0zg wrote:
| These are basically adversarial techniques to take advantage of
| weaknesses in a biological neural net. Love it.
| kindatrue wrote:
| <goes to buy Googly Eye Glasses to wear on the back of my head to
| avoid mountain lions>
| switchbak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| oopsiforgot7 wrote:
| Sounds like adversarial patches
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| 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.
| svat wrote:
| "Should animals have more eyes? Why don't they? Onion Science
| Editor Raef Gillis wonders."
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUOAZisYQjM
| odomojuli wrote:
| 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
|
| 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?
| jungletime wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I'm assuming they're a protected species or firearms of
| sufficient caliber are not prevalent in these villages?
| renewiltord wrote:
| They are:
|
| * A protected endangered species
|
| * Hard to track
|
| * Better to not encounter than to fight
|
| It's sort of like grizzlies in Northern America National
| Parks. Your ideal situation is you aren't encountering a
| half-ton apex predator so if you dissuade the encounter and
| you also avoid it, it's much better than attempting to
| perform Pavlovian training.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| swader999 wrote:
| For grizzly bear attacks, bear mace is more effective
| than guns. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/spray-more-
| effective-than...
| saddestcatever wrote:
| High caliber firearms could be cost prohibitive, or simply
| illegal in that jurisdiction. Alternatively, firearms are
| only as useful as you are aware and capable of reacting...
| jandrese wrote:
| Tigers tend to ambush their prey. You don't know you're under
| attack until its teeth are severing your jugular.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > 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?
| enchiridion wrote:
| Fawns are covered in white spots, could that be why?
|
| As for other animals, the RNG probably just didn't spin that
| way.
| easymodex wrote:
| I suppose if they all had it, noone would be fooled anymore.
| headsupernova wrote:
| That argument would seem to apply to insects with eye
| markings as well, so can't be correct here.
| [deleted]
| awb wrote:
| Maybe there's not enough evolutionary pressure from predation
| to necessitate it. For deer and rabbits, they seem to be
| optimizing for speed and agility which makes other deterrence
| modes less necessary.
| JoshTko wrote:
| An eye pattern only deters ambush predators and the pattern
| could make them more vulnerable to other predators.
| c22 wrote:
| I'd guess possibly time? Insects have had a lot more
| generations filled with more frequent predation attempts _and_
| they 've been doing it for longer. There is a lot more
| variation across insects than across mammals.
| Havoc wrote:
| >Is there a reason mammals don't/haven't evolved this way?
|
| Zebra is likely the closest adaptation. That's more of an
| optical illusion than eye logic.
|
| I suspect it has to do with how fast big predators learn. If
| you put a fake snake in a fruit tree for example it takes about
| a month before the birds learn. Big apex predators learn even
| faster presumably. So that's just too fast on a evolution time
| scale.
| lopmotr wrote:
| Sounds like the predators may eventually learn that they're
| fake:
|
| "it is recommended that the technique be applied periodically,
| when predation rates are higher, also to avoid predator
| habituation."
|
| With their bigger brains, perhaps cats and wolves can learn or
| visually identify discrepancies better than birds.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > But why haven't deer or bunnies, for example, evolved to have
| white patches on their rear ends
|
| They have. Bunnies famously have distinct white tails that bob
| up and down as they run.
|
| http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/08/why-rabbits-have-white-...
|
| And some deer have distinct white/dark patches on their
| backside:
|
| https://krahnpix.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/t6c8813.jpg
|
| https://i.imgur.com/6JZdQBz.jpg
|
| The article conjectures that the function of these is to be a
| super-salient signal for a predator's visual system, so they
| attend to the wrong end of the prey in a chase. Maybe tracking
| the back end gives a degraded cue to the predators prey-motion-
| model. But the high-contrast patches are hard to ignore, like
| chaff for radar.
|
| This is probably a different effect than false eyes have on
| cats, since cats sneak up on prey that aren't looking.
| brzozowski wrote:
| Reminds me of the watching-eye effect:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watching-eye_effect
| laretluval wrote:
| The Eye of Sauron is a great motivator.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We are all mutants.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| In fact, you are descendant from the original mutant(s)
| NortySpock wrote:
| https://www.popsci.com/muscular-animals-babies-myostatin/
|
| We already have mutant cattle, and dogs, and mice.
| xenonite wrote:
| Zebra stripes reduced biting by horse-flies, indeed:
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| rossjudson wrote:
| Even better: Eyespots with built in lasers.
| swayvil wrote:
| 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.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| Indeed, there are lots of stories about the effect of eye
| contact in human behavior, charisma and persuasion. Sam Harris
| has a few stories about this, and [writes a bit in this
| post](https://samharris.org/look-into-my-eyes/). Try to catch
| Osho, the guru in the video, blinking. He doesn't, he barely
| moves his eyelids 1/4 of the way down once a minute or so. It's
| fascinating.
| trhway wrote:
| >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...
|
| > 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.
| varjag wrote:
| Everything is better with googly eyes on.
| Ccecil wrote:
| 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.
| deeringc wrote:
| I heard the exact same from a shark expert in the Great Barrier
| Reef. Rather than using a cage or anything we'd normally
| associate with shark diving, he puts a set of googly eyes on
| the back of his head and had been safely shark diving
| professionally for 2 decades.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Keep in mind the best shark experts have no idea how sharks
| reproduce.
| slim wrote:
| I don't think sharks have the same cognitive capacities as
| felines plus felines imply a lot of things about their prey
| when they do this like : there are only two eyes, facing the
| same direction, prey can only move in 2d etc... which are not
| true under water
| oopsiforgot7 wrote:
| Did you ever hear the tragedy of Vitaly Nikolayenko?
|
| "He spent 33 years living with the brown bears (Ursus arctos)
| native to the Kamchatka peninsula (...) For over 20 years,
| Nikolayenko followed an enormous male he named Dobrynya,
| forming such an easy bond that the bear would often curl up
| to sleep just a few feet from him."
|
| Eventually he died of a bear mauling.
|
| Moral of the story: it works until it doesn't.
| Udik wrote:
| > Eventually he died of a bear mauling
|
| Wow, same year and two months later than Timothy Treadwell,
| "Grizzly Man".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell
| mcguire wrote:
| Please don't tell the Discovery Channel about this. We'll
| be inundated by bear-related conspiracy theories. Or
| "Bear Week".
| sildur wrote:
| An unbearable week.
| dboreham wrote:
| See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell
| vecter wrote:
| Did that bear maul him though?
| JackFr wrote:
| "True Stories of Survivorship Bias"
| wrnr wrote:
| Even big cats use this technique to ward off big cats:
|
| https://www.mindenpictures.com/cache/pcache2/00539194.jpg
| tejtm wrote:
| I came to a different conclusion after watching footage of a
| family hunting together at night.
|
| There is also a third very similar white dot on the tip of
| the tail which is very much more dynamic that the two fixed
| points on the ears. By moving the tail relative to the ears I
| would swear the ones in front could at least communicate
| their own intents to the ones behind them if not issue
| perfectly silent directives
| wrnr wrote:
| Interesting theory, Tigers not know to hunt in packs, but
| you might be right thats it's a way to counter their own
| camouflage. Do you remember the footage.
| [deleted]
| tejtm wrote:
| It was a mother and juveniles, and it would have been
| decades ago. Maybe not exactly "Mutual of Omaha's Wild
| Kindom" but something similar.
|
| []https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Kingdom
| rootsudo wrote:
| That is cool.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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...
| heleninboodler wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| No big gnarly teeth, but re: the sibling comments,
| searching "dazzle cows" reveals https://journals.plos.org/p
| losone/article/figures?id=10.1371...
|
| sadly not genuine dazzle camo but in the ballpark
| [deleted]
| rozab wrote:
| Awesome! This is similar to dazzle camouflage from WW1, the
| idea being to disguise the heading of the ship. I'm not sure
| it was ever shown to actually work though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Dazzle was meant to fool coincidence rangefinders. The
| method of operation of such a rangefinder is that you see
| two halves of a picture, and your job as the operator is to
| adjust a range knob until the two halves "line up" and
| produce a single picture. By making parts of the ship easy
| to mistake for other parts, dazzle made this hard.
|
| Dazzle fundamentally failed at this task because the
| primary opponent, Imperial Germany, did not use coincidence
| rangefinders. Instead, they used stereoscopic rangefinders,
| against which Dazzle had little effect. (Incidentally, the
| Germans also went to war with a naval camouflage paint
| scheme that was best designed to defeat their own
| instruments, and was notably less effective against the
| Royal Navy.)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This has me really curious about a bigger topic: "what
| are some massive wartime expenditures (money, resources,
| attention) that ended up being completely ineffective?"
| hawk_ wrote:
| My favorite example of this is the Spruce Goose.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules
| pjc50 wrote:
| Most of the German "wunderwaffe", really. The V2
| programme killed more during its manufacture than it did
| as targets.
| eduardo_f wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| There is a comedic book on this called "My Tank is Fight"
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Soviet anti-tank dogs [0] in WW2. Although in truth the
| expenditure wasn't massive.
|
| > the Soviets used their own diesel engine tanks to train
| the dogs rather than German tanks which had gasoline
| engines.[5] As the dogs relied on their acute sense of
| smell, the dogs sought out familiar Soviet tanks instead
| of strange-smelling German tanks
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog
| mcguire wrote:
| On the other hand, dazzle did make the crew feel better.
| And the ships had to be painted anyway....
| dalbasal wrote:
| It work on magpies. When they nest, Maggies "swoop" at people,
| dogs and such that get too close. In australia (where all birds
| are much bolder), people do the sunglasses trick.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| My second day in Australia I had one swoop me about 5 times
| and then finally peck or claw my scalp and it was a bloody
| mess. I went into the trailer I was staying in and the bird
| perched on a branch and evil eyed me for 30 minutes. Those
| birds are gangster.
|
| Later I saw kids waiting for the school bus with ice cream
| boxes on their head with two dots drawn on the back.
| Definitely not a fashion thing.
|
| The locals got I good laugh from me getting pecked because
| they all know the tricks after the first warning swoop.
| tantalor wrote:
| Why would animals recognize sunglasses as eyes?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, I still see Orca eyespots as eyes and I've known
| they're not for at least two decades now.
| king_panic wrote:
| TIL :)
| advaita wrote:
| IIRC, In Sundarban Delta (India/Bangladesh) people put on masks
| on the back of the head for similar reasons.
|
| EDIT: Yeap, here's NYT article from 1989
| https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/05/science/face-masks-fool-t...
| [deleted]
| sircastor wrote:
| This reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin,
| having read about this practice, makes his own mask to
| protect himself from Hobbes' pouncing.
|
| [1] https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/10/23
| tome wrote:
| That's cool. The comic was about one year after the
| newspaper, so perhaps it got into the public consciousness
| during that period!
| erikig wrote:
| Related:
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/10/25
|
| The outcome of Calvin's "experiment"
| ravoori wrote:
| Apparently putting on a mask at the back of the head stopped
| working after a while https://books.google.com/books?id=zU7Pm
| IjthpoC&pg=PA38#v=one...
| [deleted]
| TheCoreh wrote:
| Interesting. If that's the case, I wonder why no large mammals
| evolved these patterns like for example, butterflies did.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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...
| dash2 wrote:
| Anyone who's read Babar the Elephant knows that trick :-)
|
| https://www.telerama.fr/sites/tr_master/files/styles/simplec...
| ncmncm wrote:
| 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.
| fgblanch wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| notJim wrote:
| It does, the article mentions that painted eyes can deter
| bicycle theft, for example. There are more examples in the
| article.
| londons_explore wrote:
| A shop in England, 'poundland', which is quite a target for low
| value casual thieves, has a lifesize mural of a policeman in
| uniform at each store.
|
| Don't know if it works, but they must at least think it does.
| closeparen wrote:
| Authoritarian regimes seem to be into portraits of the glorious
| leader "watching" everywhere.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| What's more crazy about this is that the 25 day survival rate for
| these cattle is only 98%.
| inetsee wrote:
| I can honestly say that this is the most unusual article I have
| ever seen on Hacker News.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Surely predators will eventually learn that eyes on the back of
| animals are to be ignored?
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| "Eventually" may take a long time.
| tejtm wrote:
| kinda of like avoiding any opportunist predator spammer,
| hacker, advertising ... If you do _anything_ chances are really
| good they will just move one to something that is not.
| [deleted]
| tlholaday wrote:
| > ... 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 wrote:
| The back ends tend to be a bit kick-y.
|
| Is that a quote?
| hanniabu wrote:
| Which side is the back?
| lukas099 wrote:
| Remember that every adaptation comes with a tradeoff. This
| adaptation may require more complex brains which cost space
| and/or energy.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Won't predators learn eventually not to get fooled by that?
| [deleted]
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| Do you mean at an evolutionary time scale or within their life
| times?
| lukas099 wrote:
| 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.
| commonturtle wrote:
| Depends. If there isn't a strong enough selection pressure
| (there is plenty of wild prey, they only rarely attack cattle)
| then they wouldn't learn to ignore the eyespots for many
| generations.
| alach11 wrote:
| 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.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Maybe painting a gaping artificial mouth snarling with long
| pointy fangs on a cow's butt would help too?
| not2b wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. It'd be good if multiple separate herds
| could be tested, but that would get pretty expensive.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| 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.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| 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
| Havoc wrote:
| That is indeed terrifying. I can see how predators might have
| second thoughts
| mcv wrote:
| I wonder how it affects their fellow cattle, though. It must
| be weird to see your colleagues staring at you with their
| butts.
| marmshallow wrote:
| Wow, they don't look very real at all.
| agency wrote:
| Those predators must be feeling foolish
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Whoa!!
|
| Went in expecting a couple of crude round spots for eyes
|
| Got ACTUAL EYES with the whites, iris\pupil, darkened rims,
| even a suggestion of tear ducts
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(page generated 2020-08-17 23:00 UTC)