July 13th: Festival of the Three Cows

Today is the Festival of the Three Cows which takes place on the border of France and Spain: In an ancient Basque blood feud, French shepherds killed Spanish shepherds and as punishment, the French were ordered to give the Spanish three cows every year on this date. Now, it is an elaborate ritual followed by revelry.

10 things you may not know about cows:

1. First let's debunk a couple of myths. Cows don't have four stomachs. They only have one, but it is divided into four compartments: the rumen (the largest, which contains the microbes that digest cellulose), reticulum (the smallest, also known as "the honeycomb". If a cow eats a metal object, it ends up here and can cause a condition called hardware disease), omasum (from which water and nutrients are absorbed), and abomasum (similar to a human stomach).
2. Bulls are not enraged by the colour red. Cattle are actually colour blind and cannot distinguish between red and green. It is the movement of the cape in a bull fight, not the colour, which annoys them. While on the subject of senses, cattle have almost 360° panoramic vision; they can detect odours up to five miles away and can hear low and high frequency sounds that humans cannot.
3. Cows are intelligent, sociable and have emotions. They have friends - a cow in a herd will by preference spend time with up to four preferred individuals, and will dislike others. They prefer to sleep in family groups. They hold grudges for years, and it has been shown that they will produce more milk if they are treated well. They are curious and inquisitive, and enjoy solving problems such as how to open a door to get food. They will show signs of excitement when they figure it out. Cows are devoted mothers and will walk for miles to look for a missing calf.
4. A cow's day includes six hours eating, four hours sleeping and eight hours chewing the cud. They munch about 40lb of food a day and drink 30 gallons of water, which is enough to fill a bathtub. They suck up their water rather than lap it up with their tongues.
5. There are approximately 1.3 billion cattle in the world, and about 950 different breeds. They can interbreed with yaks and bison, but not with water buffalo.
6. "Cattle" is an interesting word - its original meaning was movable personal property, which would include any kind of livestock. There is no singular form of the word. You can talk of "some cattle" but not "a cattle".
7. A cow's natural lifespan is around 25 years. The oldest recorded cow, Big Bertha, died at the age of 48 in 1993.
8. Cattle are sacred in India - at one time the penalty for killing a cow there was death. It is believed, too, that cow pee has medicinal properties: distilled cow urine is a common medicine in India although there is no scientific proof that it works.
9. In breeds where the cows have spots or markings, no two cows have the same markings. They are as unique as fingerprints.
10. The genome of the cow was mapped in 2009. The scientists found that cattle have 22,000 genes, and that they share 80% of them with us.