14 July 2008 75 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

The idea that huge herds of cows produce enough methane from various bodily functions to effect the earths climate has been floating around for awhile now.  Although one common misconception is that most of this methane comes from, well… cow farts.  In actuality most of the methane is burped up during digestion.  Cellulose in the grasses the cows eat are digested by the help of certain bacteria in the the cows stomachs.  However, this is some what inefficient and a byproduct of this digestion process is the methane that is burped out in a process called eructation.  

But what if you truly wanted to see what kind of green house gases were released by an average cow?  What kind of device would be required and just how weird would it look strapped to that patient bovine?  A group of Argentinean scientists think they might have the answer.

This oddly short paragraph and silent video from the BBC don’t really do the story justice.  However, the contraption strapped to the cows back is worth a chuckle.  The cow doesn’t seem to mind, although they didn’t show exactly there the end of the tube was stuck.   While cows and other grazing heard animals have been around for 100s of years, we a starting to reach a point that every little bit has an effect and the massive food herds of today don’t help the matter.  For a far more in-depth take on the problems posed by cows, methane and other climate change issues check out this article from the new scientist.

[via the BBC]