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Cow tipping is a pastime allegedly common in rural areas, in which participants sneak up on an upright sleeping cow and then push it over for amusement. Some variants of this urban legend state that the cow is then unable to get up.
The appeal of this myth derives from the belief that cows are slow-witted and top-heavy, and the corollary assumption that relatively little force would need to be applied to the top of such apparently precarious ruminants to tip them over.
Evidence that cow tipping is an urban myth
There is no evidence aside from (mostly unreliable) eyewitness reports that any cows have ever been tipped in this manner. In addition, there are a number of problems with typical accounts of cow tipping. Unlike horses, cows do not 'lock their legs' when they sleep. Cows lie down while sleeping . Most of their sleep is very light and easily disturbed — typical of herd prey animals; they take only short naps at regular intervals throughout a 24 hour period, which means that at any given time, some members of the herd are aware and alert. The vision field of a cow is larger than that of a human, and they have acute senses of hearing and smell. Thus, cows are not easy to sneak up on. If startled, they quickly communicate to the rest of the herd that something is amiss.
Cows are large, and would be very difficult to tip, even for several people working together. A grown cow can be over 1.5 m (5 feet) high with a mass of on the order of 700 kg (1,500 lb) and sometimes reaching 900 kg (2000 lb). By way of comparison, a typical sumo wrestler masses only 140 kg (310 lb). The four corners of a large "American-style" domestic refrigerator fairly closely approximate the spread of a cow's legs. If the refrigerator were cut down to 1.5 m (5 feet), filled with 400 kg (880 lb) of weights, and placed in a muddy field, tipping it would offer a comparable challenge to tipping a cow.
Variants of the legend claim that successfully tipping a cow will result in its death. Although cows can die if prevented from sitting upright for an extended period of time, briefly forcing a cow onto its back will not kill it. Under typical circumstances, a cow knocked onto its back would be able to restore itself to an upright position.
Other versions of the cow tipping story attempt to evade these objections by claiming, for example, that although cows lie down to dream, they can still doze while standing. Others appeal to a paper published by the University of British Columbia's Zoological Physics department, which calculates that, in certain circumstances, five people could topple a cow. Such a situation, however, would be highly unlikely, meaning they effectively debunked it as an urban legend.
Finally, attempting to tip a cow is a patently dangerous activity. Despite the animal's reputation for being placid and slow-moving, a cow is easily capable of hurting someone when provoked or nervous; a herd of cows or a bull (easily mistaken for a cow in the dark) would be even more dangerous.
Possibility that cow tipping may be achievable
The Times (London) of 8 November 2005, contains two letters on the subject, including one that appears to describe a method by which the task might be achievable by three people. This follows some earlier discussions on the subject in The Times (see reference under External Links, below).
A reader in Hawaii wrote:
- "Cow tipping is possible, it is very simple and I've done it. It requires three people (note: be very quiet, but sobriety may be a hindrance), one person on one side of the cow, two on the other. The lone person pushes very hard on his side, and waiting for the balancing response from the startled animal, the other two then push very hard on their side to overbalance her. Works like a charm."
Another reader, a post-doc at Cambridge, suggested one person could slam a cow down with a running start: "I have calculated that an 80kg (175lb) person would only need to run at the cow at about 18km/h (12mph) in order to tip it."
Cow tipping in popular culture
- In an episode of MTV's "Beavis and Butt-Head", a cow is tipped by the two of them.
- It is mentioned in That '70s Show as something the kids did.
- The film Heathers features a scene in which a crowd of drunken jocks participate in a spot of cow tipping in which, unusually, the tippers suffer more humiliation than the tippee.
- In 1991, NPR broadcast a half-hour radio play called "Cow Tipping," a comedy about five hapless college-aged cow tippers in Illinois. Produced by the Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop.
- It is an often discussed topic on the popular breakfast radio show Foxy and Tom.
- It was also featured in Chris Farley's movie, Tommy Boy, in which Farley and Rob Lowe attempted and failed to tip a slumbering cow.
- In the computer video game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, there is a random encounter on the world map that puts the player characters into a field with cows that can be tipped.
- In Animorphs #28 The Experiment, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill is in a cow pasture when a few drunk college students wander in. Ax is an alien who looks like a horse but with a tail and two stalk eyes above. Marco sighs and says that they're probably trying to do cow tipping. Ax attempts to hunch over in hopes that they won't notice, but the college students approach. Ax whips his tail around and knocks them out.
- In the Drawn Together episode "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", Wooldoor Sockbat and Ling-Ling pushed Toot Braunstein over while she was standing in a field eating grass, causing her to moo. The joke is that Toot is always being made fun of for being fat (like a cow).
See also
- Steer wrestling in which a running steer is "tipped".
External links
Articles discussing how cows could be tipped
- University of British Columbia - The Mechanics of Cow Tipping (PDF)
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln - The Statics of Cow Tipping
Articles arguing that cow tipping is an urban legend
- The Most Urban of All Urban Legends
- Adventures in cow tipping - Fiction!
- The Times article on Cow Tipping by Jack Malvern
- The Register article debunking the myth of cow tipping while drunk by Lester Haines
Additional links about cow tipping
- Humorous article about Cow Tipping - ubersite.com
- Cow-tippers Handbook - Funny, illustrated book about Cow Tipping
- Cow-tipping computer game One picture shows the player character using martial arts in a stance to focus his chi as the means to push over a three thousand pound cow.