• Question: Why can't cows walk down stairs?

    Asked by jesusjones to Andrew, Ben, Beth, Heather, Louisa on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Heather McKee

      Heather McKee answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Cows in a similar way to giraffe’s have knees that dont bend in the right way to decend slopes thus they find it hard to go down slopes and if they came across a stairs well they’d have to get the lift!

      Explaination: due to the way a cow’s knee bends it can’t raise it’s leg much at the ‘hip’ or ‘shoulder’ equivalent (which I think is anatomically formed of the equivalent bones to the knee in the human since the cow walks on it’s fingertips – its hooves are essentially fingernails). Also the fact that they bear most of their weight in there backside an imbalance occurs and they most likely would topple over!!

      see video below of a cow succeding in walking down a mini set of steps succesfully mainly due to its ingenius stretching tactics at the end!

      Also- I found this site for a company that specializes in getting cows that have gone up stairs back down. It’s in the UK, and their website is brilliant;

      http://www.hyperactive-stage.co.uk/bovinedescenders/about.html

      You can see on the fore-limb that the upper part of the limb consists of two bones (equivalent to the bones below the elbow) and then there is a single bone between these and the shoulder blade.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      I’ve never heard this – sounds fascinating! What’s the difference between walking down stairs and walkign down a slope though? Someone else might be better to answer this I’m afraid. Could it be a knee issue? Most four legged animals only have two knees – on their front legs. Elephants on the other hand are the only ones that I’ve heard of that have a knee on each leg – I wonder if they can walk down stairs. Of course, we’d have to build a staircase they could stand on without crushing!

    • Photo: Beth Dyson

      Beth Dyson answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Stairs are designed for humans, who have a fairly good balance and walk on two feet. And even when we are young, going downstairs is a scary process. Anyone with children will know that babies learn to get upstairs, but have to be carried down until they are confident enough to know that they can safely get down each step.

      Cows are unlikely to ever be in a situation where they learn to walk downstairs and are not used to it! They also have different leg joints and feet, have four feet to deal with, and are much more back heavy, so stairs would be a huge problem for them! Imagine how hard it would be to come down stairs on your hands and feet with your bum in the air!

    • Photo: Louisa Chard

      Louisa Chard answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Sounds like the beginning of a joke…
      I have a feeling that they can if they have to, they can certainly walk down 1 step. I don’t think that they can co-ordinate their front and back legs very well to manage more, but don’t really have much more of an idea than this I’m afraid.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      I think is because of the way their knees bend, but this isn’t my field of expertise 😉

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