• Question: Why do cows moo?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 14 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      To communicate 🙂 As to why it’s a ‘moo’ sound, I think that will be to do with how their mouth and tongue shapes the sound.

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      Interestingly, cows are one of not many animals whose noises are said the same in lots of different languages. In English, Greek and Hebrew they moo, in French they meuh, in German they mmuuh, in Japanese they go mau mau, and in Italian they muu. Pretty similar! Not so for pigs – we say they oink, in Dutch they go knor knor, in Finnish they go noff, Japanese pigs go boo boo and Russian ones go hrgu-hrgu! (From this great table here: http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/animal.html) There’s also a cool video of people making animal sounds in different languages – I wonder why some animals are more variable than others… https://vimeo.com/25215616

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 15 Nov 2017:

      Apparently baby cows moo to tell their mothers they want milk.
      And they can tell each other’s moos apart!
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-30484034

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