It seems that we’re not the only ones who can benefit from VR. Farmers from Moscow put on VR headsets to cows to see if it improved their mood and milk production. The headset has been modified to match the structural features of the cow’s heads so that they could see properly.
The project subjected cattle to a simulated summer field with colors tuned for the animals' eyes, giving them a decidedly more pleasing landscape than a plain, confining farm.
It appears to have worked, at least on a basic level. The first test reduced the cows' anxiety and boosted their overall sentiment. While it's not certain how well this affects the quality or volume of milk, there are plans for a more "comprehensive" study to answer that question.
There are a few concerns, however, such as disturbing the cows and bringing them back to reality when you remove the headsets.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow Region)
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"It is a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of humans. We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that warmed the globe. At the time they were dependent on petrochemical power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as oil. Throughout bovine history, we have been dependent on humans to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The bovine body generates 500 liters of greenhouse gasses in the form of methane a day. Combined with a form of fusion the humans have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where cows are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is The Mootrix? Control. The Mootrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a cow into beef. " - Moopheus
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