African farmers are painting eyes on cows’ butts. This madness is actually a solution!

People are always looking for ways to make life a little bit easier. Many of them act in accordance with the principle that if something is stupid, but works, it isn’t all that stupid. They think of various inventions, which at first glance are quite funny, but if we were to look closer, we would find that they’re quite useful.

One of the problems that farmers in Africa have is with the predators attacking their cattle. To prevent this, they invented a strange method. They began painting large eyes with an astonished look on cows’ butts.


The method was developed by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Australia. They had a chance to conduct tests in natural conditions and found that it’s actually effective. At the sight of such a decorated cow, lions retreated and abandoned their hunt. Out of a herd of 62, they caught only 3 cows. They didn’t touch any of the cows with eyes on their butts!


Butterflies contributed to the invention of this protective measure. Specialists used the fact that the colorful patterns on their wings scare away birds and decided to paint similar patterns on the butts of cows.

It isn’t only about protecting cattle, but also about the declining population of African lions. In retaliation, oftentimes farmers set up traps for the wild cats and killed them. In the 90s, the population of lions was at more than 100,000, and today it’s only about 23-39 thousand.

The idea, though quite crazy, turns out to be very necessary and surprisingly effective. It’s also proof that sometimes even stupid ideas turn out to be very good.