Carnivorous Cow - India - Verified?

This is amazing to me. I have just stumbled on a cache of stories that talk about cows eating other living animals.

This cow in India (supposedly) eats chickens.

www.cnn.com...

And this one in Africa ate a goat!

www.dispatch.co.za...

This one in Iran ate a freakin' baby!

www.forteantimes.com...

There are even a few pictures floating around the web showing Holsteins eating rabbits!

That's nuts!

I have such a hard time believing that cows are predators, but apparently they do occasionally eat other living things.

Did they always? Do they eat more live animals now than they used to a few million years ago, or fewer? Where do the animal rights groups stand on this wanton cruelty?

So bizarre...

It's a scary thought to imagine a "peaceful" cow "viciously attacking other animals and devouring the meat". (And the Worth 1000 picture you posted doesn't make it any less scary.)

It is however not uncommon for herbivores to eat meat or in extreme cases practice cannibalism. In most cases it is a mineral deficiency that causes these herbivores to seek out a food source that will supply them with the necessary minerals - which in some cases may be meat.

Elephants have been seen chewing on bones, and people at first thought that the animals were "hunted and killed" by the elephants as a snack. The fact is that elephants would chew on old (dry) bones for a mineral supplement.

Hippos - which are strictly herbivores”, have been reported to kill antelope and then eat the flesh. Here the debate goes on, however. Some say that hippos (which are very territorial) kill other animals that come to close, and will continue mauling the carcasses, long after they're dead - just because they are aggressive. Others say that some hippos do in fact like the taste of flesh, and would deliberately kill other animals to eat them.
Hippo Eats Zebra

So, there are many cases of herbivores eating meat, and cows eating rabbits (in specific) has been studied.

"The cows in the study were suffering from nutritional deficiency because they lived on over grazed land. Many of them licked or ate animal bones, presumably for the mineral content. One cow was observed on two occasions to eat an entire rabbit carcass that it had scavenged. This behaviour, nutrient deficiency leading to scavenging carrion, is probably one of the intermediate steps leading from herbivory to carnivory."




All that said, it's of little help to know that your loveable Jersey cow, Betsy, can at any time turn around and try and eat you!

my wife is an expert at photoshop, or at least very proficient and she could also slap a sharks mouth on a closeup of a cow. easy enough blending edges and replacing bits from the face to match the color of the new mouth, etc.

-adhd

Originally posted by ADHDsux4me
my wife is an expert at photoshop, or at least very proficient and she could also slap a sharks mouth on a closeup of a cow. easy enough blending edges and replacing bits from the face to match the color of the new mouth, etc.

-adhd

I'm sure WyrdeOne didn't present the cow in the picture as the "killer cow" in question, as Worth1000.com (the source of the picture) is a site specifically for Photoshop competitions. IMO WyrdeOne only used the picture per illustration.

Originally posted by Gemwolf

Originally posted by ADHDsux4me
my wife is an expert at photoshop, or at least very proficient and she could also slap a sharks mouth on a closeup of a cow. easy enough blending edges and replacing bits from the face to match the color of the new mouth, etc.

-adhd

I'm sure WyrdeOne didn't present the cow in the picture as the "killer cow" in question, as Worth1000.com (the source of the picture) is a site specifically for Photoshop competitions. IMO WyrdeOne only used the picture per illustration.

Your right, I think the picture is just to illustrate the story. The teeth on the cow are from a white shark.

It's not that unusual for the cattle feed producer to add chicken bits to boost the protein content.

It's very common to convert chicken feathers, there's plants all over the South that do that. I'm not sure what all goes on in order to make feathers digestible, but it smells bad. I know it involved grinding them up and cooking them with some sort of chemical.

I wasn't trying to pass off the photo-chop of the Great White Cow as an actual example of a carnivorous bovine, it was just for humor value.

Originally posted by ADHDsux4me
my wife is an expert at photoshop, or at least very proficient and she could also slap a sharks mouth on a closeup of a cow. easy enough blending edges and replacing bits from the face to match the color of the new mouth, etc.// lol!those are shark teeth pasted on image.see the double row of teeth?duh!

In regards to the hippos, I know that hippos will kill herbivorous animals so that they can rip out their bellies and eat the undigested grass and plants quite frequently. And, if Animal Planet is accurate, they kill animals for fun very often. They'll eat meat, but just for the taste, it doesn't do anything for them nutritionally.

Maybe the cows have a similar thing going on. True Mad Cow disease.

I told a co-worker about the calf that was eating chicks, and he wasn't at all surprised. He said their cows would sometimes eat rats they'd caught in the barn when he was growing up. I suppose it's not at all uncommon, just kind of disturbing to think of.

Animals are acting pretty weird of late. I actually posted a thread about this a while back.

Animals Going Wild

I am not sure what is occurring with animals as of late. Then we have the whole disappearing bee thing going around that is just bizarre. It makes me wonder if the toxins we are throwing into the air are making the animals mutate or something.

[edit on 8-3-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

Mmm now thats a cow I'd like to eat.

My steak ate smaller steaks to become this massive steak.


The Steak Chain is awesome!

I don't believe that animals are changing any more than would occur through natural evolution. What is changing is our culture. As more and more food is produced by fewer people on less land we have lost our connection to nature. What is normal behavior in animals would be ignored by someone raised on a ranch or farm but would seem odd to the increasing numbers of us living in cities.

I consider myself fortunate to have been raised around farms and ranches in rural areas. To me there is nothing unusual being mentioned in this thread but to those who have spent their lives inside cities animal behavior might seem abnormal even though it is not.

An example might be chickens being cannibals. How many of you would be aware of that or would think something strange was going on if it were revealed in articles like these? When you have chickens in a coop you have to immediately remove any weak or injured chickens or healthy ones will eat them. It is brutal to watch as they attack them en-mass and devour them. Even so this is perfectly normal behavior for a chicken and has probably been so since chickens became chickens.

Another example is that for years the fact that Bonobos and other Great Apes were omnivores was denied or even hidden. It put a real kink in the theory that we are somehow naturally vegetarians or would benefit from a meat free diet. There were even documentaries floating around PBS and others espousing that point of view. When videos of apes eating meat started showing up this cover-up quietly disappeared. It was just not politically correct for us to know that all apes are omnivores as we are. In fact like us they prefer meat when it is available.

Cows may well do this to increase their protein intake. The volume of feed they are given on ranches and farms is determined by the protein content of the feed. Hay with a high protein content is more valuable. This is probably completely natural behavior that seems odd to people who have not been raised around them.

these cows are hindu. they were reincarnated as animals cause they were unfit for human life. as a result they still eat like humans.

the one that killed the baby was a murderer hindu,lol

Originally posted by ADHDsux4me
my wife is an expert at photoshop, or at least very proficient and she could also slap a sharks mouth on a closeup of a cow. easy enough blending edges and replacing bits from the face to match the color of the new mouth, etc.

-adhd

Like Gemwolf said, the picture was just to illustrate a point. The site Worth1000 is a Photoshop Competition website. Obviously it's not a real picture of a cow, haha.

Anyway, that's just weird! I guess cows are omnivores now...?

Maybe he just wants to be a SpokesCow for Chick-Fil-A:


Sorry, it had to be done


[edit on 3/10/2007 by defcon5]

Everybody! The cows are coming! In 2012 cows will take over the world, they will eat every chicken, goat and baby! No-one is safe!


[edit on 13/03/07 by MAD Hatt3r]

Kinda makes ya wonder what's really in that burger.WHERE"S THE BEEF!

it has happened before but lets be glad that bessies appetite for flesh is an extremley rare occurence but i do love how the family of this cow claimed it was a tiger in its previous life thats superstition for yah

that cow is violent by design. He is savage