ABSTRACT
Cattle behaviour is driven by their emotional responses to their environment. These provide the means for them to learn how to respond to changes in their environment, that is, how to behave. The tools at our disposal to examine the emotions of cattle have been developed mostly in the last twenty years. Before embarking on complex tests of cows’ preferences, it is important to understand the perceptual world of cattle, in particular their vision, olfaction and gustation. For example, before testing the effects of different lighting conditions on the behaviour of cattle, their ability to distinguish different colour and intensity of different light sources should be understood (e.g. Phillips and Weiguo, 1991; Phillips and Lomas, 2001). Then, having gained an understanding that cattle have less ability than us to distinguish luminaires of varying intensity, or between the colours blue and green, but have a much broader field of vision, different lighting regimes can be developed and tested for their impact on behaviour. The knowledge that long wavelengths of light (red colours), as well as being less well perceived, stimulate activity, should deter us from using this form of artificial light in highly stocked cattle sheds. At the same time, it is important to consider the aetiology of their behaviour, and its adaptive benefit. In this respect, the ability of cattle to distinguish red from green may have had adaptive benefit in helping them to detect injured cattle that are bleeding, or cows in oestrus with reddened vulvas.
