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Cow tipping

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An unsuspecting potential victim

Cow tipping is a pastime allegedly common in rural areas, in which participants sneak up on an upright sleeping cow and then push it over for amusement. Some variants of this urban legend state that the cow is then unable to get up.

One popular variant relies on a supposition that cows lean into a steady wind while asleep in order to keep balance. Based on this, the cow tipper lightly pushes against one side of the cow's torso, and gradually increases the force of push. The cow, while asleep, leans into the push and remains upright. Then when the cow tipper has all of their body weight on the cow, they jump to the side. The cow, still leaning into the ‘wind’, tips over in that direction.


Evidence against cow tipping

The concept of cow-tipping requires that the cow be unaware and asleep: not looking at you. Cows have good hearing and are easily awakened. The cow may not think a person is going to tip them over, but may still avoid a stranger nonetheless.

There is no evidence, aside from mostly unreliable eyewitness reports, that any cows have ever been tipped in the purported manner. In addition, there are a number of problems with typical accounts of cow tipping. Unlike horses, cows do not 'lock their legs' when they sleep. Cows lie down while sleeping [1] and most of their sleep is very light and easily disturbed — typical of herd prey animals; they take only short naps at regular intervals throughout a 24 hour period, which means that at any given time, some members of the herd are aware and alert. The vision field of a cow is larger than that of a human, and they have acute senses of hearing and smell. Thus, cows are not easy to sneak up on. If startled, they quickly communicate to the rest of the herd that something is amiss.

Cows are large, and would be very difficult to tip, even for several people working together. A grown cow can be over 1.5 m (5 feet) high with a mass in the order of 540 kg (1,200 lb) all the way up to 900 kg (2,000 lb). By way of comparison, a typical sumo wrestler masses only 140 kg (310 lb). The four corners of a large "American-style" domestic refrigerator fairly closely approximate the spread of a cow's legs. If the refrigerator were cut down to 1.5 m (5 feet), filled with 400 kg (880 lb) of weights, and placed in a muddy field, tipping it would offer a comparable challenge to tipping a cow.

Variants of the legend claim that successfully tipping a cow will result in its death. Although cows can die if prevented from sitting upright for an extended period of time, briefly forcing a cow onto its back will not kill it. Under typical circumstances, a cow knocked onto its back would be able to restore itself to an upright position.

Other versions of the cow tipping story attempt to evade these objections by claiming, for example, that although cows lie down to dream, they can still doze while standing. Others appeal to a paper published by the University of British Columbia which calculates that, in certain circumstances, five people could topple a cow. Such a situation, however, would be highly unlikely, meaning they effectively debunked it as an urban legend. [2]

Finally, attempting to tip a cow is a potentially dangerous activity. Despite the animal's reputation for being placid and slow-moving, a cow is easily capable of hurting someone when provoked or nervous; a herd of cows or a bull (easily mistaken for a cow in the dark) would be even more dangerous. It is also a common practice among dairy farmers to keep lactating cows inside and to keep pregnant cows who are not in milk outside until they calve. Thus, if cow tipping is attempted where most cattle are kept inside in large barns but only a few by comparison are kept in pasture, there is an increased chance that the target of cow tipping may be pregnant. Whether an attempt at cow tipping is effective or not, even startling a pregnant cow or heifer could cause her to run and fall unnecessarily and could damage the unborn calf or the freshening cow or heifer.

Evidence for cow tipping

The Times (London) of 8 November 2005, contains two letters on the subject, including one that appears to describe a method by which the task might be achievable by three people. This follows some earlier discussions on the subject in The Times (see reference under External Links, below).

A reader in Hawaii wrote:

"Cow tipping is possible, it is very simple and I've done it. It requires three people (note: be very quiet, but sobriety may be a hindrance), one person on one side of the cow, two on the other. The lone person pushes very hard on his side, and waiting for the balancing response from the startled animal, the other two then push very hard on their side to overbalance her. Works like a charm."

Another reader, a post-doc at Cambridge, suggested one person could slam a cow down with a running start: "I have calculated that an 80kg (175lb) person would only need to run at the cow at about 18km/h (12mph) in order to tip it."

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Cow-tipping video game
  • Mentioned in a 1996 Garfield strip.
  • In an episode of MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head, a cow is tipped by the two of them.
  • It is mentioned in That '70s Show as something the kids did.
  • In 1991, NPR broadcast a half-hour radio play called "Cow Tipping," a comedy about five hapless college-aged cow tippers in Illinois. Produced by the Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop.
  • It is an often discussed topic on the popular breakfast radio show Foxy and Tom.
  • It was also featured in Chris Farley's movie, Tommy Boy, in which Farley and Rob Lowe attempted and failed to tip a slumbering cow.
  • In the computer video game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, there is a random encounter on the world map that puts the player characters into a field with cows that can be tipped. Similar random scenarios in Fallout 2 were possible.
  • In the Drawn Together episode "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", Wooldoor Sockbat and Ling-Ling pushed Toot Braunstein over while she was standing in a field eating grass, causing her to moo. The joke is that Toot is always being made fun of for being fat (like a cow) - this particular exaggeration follows Princess Clara's statement that Toot is "the same joke over and over".
  • In the movie Heathers, Veronica and Heather go on a double date on which their dates tip a cow into mud which splatters on both of them.
  • In the beginning of the movie Larva [3] two teenagers agree to tip over a cow in exchange for a strip-tease performed by their girlfriends, they succeed in tipping the cow because it has already been eaten from the inside by something, they are instantly and unknowingly infected.
  • In the Online Role Playing game Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty cow tipping is possible. http://members.cox.net/shizukana/gate-shot.htm
  • In 2006 the New York rock group Little Willies recorded a song written by Jones, Alexander and Julian called “Lou Reed”. The song claimed that the singer Lou Reed had been sighted in Texas cow tipping.
  • In the movie Sweet Home Alabama, Melanie is accused of tipping cows when she was younger.
  • In the 2004 video game The Bard's Tale, cows can be tipped in towns simply by walking up to them and pressing a button.
  • In Animorphs #28 The Experiment, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill is in a cow pasture when a few drunk college students wander in. Ax is an alien who looks like a horse but with a tail and two stalk eyes above. Marco sighs and says that they're probably trying to do cow tipping. Ax attempts to hunch over in hopes that they won't notice, but the college students approach. Ax whips his tail around and knocks them out.
  • In case five of the game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney when you press Damon Gant when he says For all I know, you could have planted them in my office. Phoenix will claim that he once tipped a cow.
  • In Day of the Tentacle, a newspaper clip implies that Purple Tentacle tipped over cows.
  • Cow-Tipping is referenced in the upcoming movie Barnyard. The cows then find one kid's house and go "boy tipping" by knocking him out of bed.
  • In The Sims 2 game for the Nintendo DS, cow-tipping is a method of obtaining a Milkshake.
  • Cow-tipping is mentioned by Billy Zane in the role of town sheriff as a local pastime in the film Silent Warnings.
  • In the Disney/Pixar film Cars, Lightning McQueen and Mater go "tractor tipping" (the anthropomorphized tractors are the vehicle equivalent of cows), which results in their being chased by an angry combine harvester (which is the vehicle equivalent of a bull).
  • In Animal Crossing: Wild World, a cow is named Tippy and has a saying of "pushy".
  • In Destroy All Humans on the X-Box, Playstation 2, and Gamecube, there are specific levels where you have to tip a specific number of cows using Telekenisis.

See also

Articles discussing how cows could be tipped
Articles arguing that cow tipping is an urban legend
Additional links about cow tipping
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