  This paper presents a study of the body orientation of domestic cattle on
free pastures in several European states, based on Google satellite
photographs. In sum, 232 herds with 3412 individuals were evaluated. Two
independent groups participated in our study and came to the same conclusion
that, in contradiction to the recent findings of other researchers, no
alignment of the animals and of their herds along geomagnetic field lines could
be found. Several possible reasons for this discrepancy should be taken into
account: poor quality of Google satellite photographs, difficulties in
determining the body axis, selection of herds or animals within herds, lack of
blinding in the evaluation, possible subconscious bias, and, most importantly,
high sensitivity of the calculated main directions of the Rayleigh vectors to
some kind of bias or to some overlooked or ignored confounder. This factor
could easily have led to an unsubstantiated positive conclusion about the
existence of magnetoreception.
