Quick, how many cows? ©voyager, all rights reserved
When I was a kid, my dad often took us for family drives on Sundays. Whenever we passed a farm with cows in the field, my dad would say, “Quick, voyager, how many cows are there,” then, he’d hit the gas and go fast, too fast for me to count them all before they were out of sight. I’d throw out a good guesstimate like 26 or 34 or 101, but no matter what my answer was, Dad always said, “Nope, there were 28 or 35 or 105.” Then he’d wait for me to say, “how did you do that so quick.’
“Easy, he’d say. I counted the legs and divided by 4.”
By that method, there are 2.5 cows.
I only get to 2.25 cows.
Well, mine told me about the infamous Hill Cows whose legs are sorter on the up side of the hill…
It was my older brothers and the infamous Mountain Sheep in my case Oh and the little studied forty foot high Mountain Duck, little studied becauce of it’s habit of eating anyone who saw it, which is why you haven’t heard of it …
2.5 is also the number I get.
My grandparents had cows (Ayrshire breed, dairy cattle), I don’t remember how many, but not more than a dozen, so there was not a great need for speed counting. I don’t think the kind of farm they had up to the 1980s would be anywhere close to being viable nowadays.
You sorta need to see this in context from the long list of 88 constellations and nearly one thousand individual stars on Kaler’s website which concludes with :
http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/cow-t.html
Oh & yes, you can click the star there for labels!