For the uninitiated, cow tipping is a prank where a person sneaks up on a sleeping cow
and pushes the animal over onto its side.
Ask around and you can probably hear about a friend of a friend who successfully tipped
a cow while out in the country late one night.
The story generally recounts participants having a few alcoholic drinks before driving
to a cow pasture and setting upon a slumbering bovine.
But is it really possible to tip a cow?
Well, anything is possible and humans are quite inventive, but in the way that cow tipping
is generally depicted- no, it is not possible to tip a sleeping cow.
The first issue here is that cows don't actually sleep while standing up, at least not in the
way we tend to think of sleep.
Cows do sometimes enter a sort of restful state while standing up, but while in this
state they are easily startled and are reasonably well aware of what's going on around them.
Their deep sleep state occurs while they are already lying down (something they do for
about 14 hours per day, with a few hours of that time in a deep sleep; the rest of the
time they're either awake or in their light-resting state).
Another issue with the idea of sneaking up on a cow that is resting while standing is
that at any given time in a herd of cattle, a number of the cows are wide awake.
Cows may be largely domesticated animals today, but they still retain their flight instinct
when they suspect a predator is nearby or observe others in the herd that appear startled
by something.
One cow will very quickly, via their behavior, alert the others in the herd if they hear
or see anything suspicious, causing the others to in turn become on edge and alert.
Given a standing cow that is resting is very easily startled from its resting state, even
without any other cows around, this makes the idea of sneaking up on one of these cows
even more difficult, if not impossible.
But let's say you and your friends manage to somehow park your car within walking distance
of a cow without alerting it (harder than you think on a quiet country night, even parking
a couple miles away), then you manage to hop the barbed wire fence and creep up to said
cow without alerting it or any other cows in the herd via sound, sight, or your scent.
In that increasingly unlikely scenario, would you physically have the strength to tip the
cow?
Dr. Margo Lillie and Tracy Boechler of the zoology department at the University of British
Columbia conducted a study in 2005 to figure out the answer to this very question.
Lillie and Boechler determined that it would take approximately 1,360 to 2,910 Newtons
of force applied at the optimal angle to tip an average cow.
(For reference, an average full grown Holstein dairy cow typically weighs in at around 1,500
lbs, though this can vary by a few hundred pounds depending on a variety of factors).
They then estimated that an average adult human could generate approximately 660 Newtons
of force at the optimal tipping angle.
So in theory, on the low end with a completely static cow, approximately two people could
apply enough force to tip said static cow.
The problem is that a cow would most certainly not stay static in such a scenario.
And heaven help you if you tried to push over an 1800 to 2000+ pound bull.
(People don't generally survive being attacked by bulls, which is probably what would happen
if you tried sneaking up on one and attempted tipping it over.)
So, on the high end, according to Dr. Lillie, overcoming the non-static cow’s ability
to brace itself would require in the optimal scenario around five people.
But even if you did this, there is the fact that a cow in a state of falling is generally
perfectly agile enough to simply catch itself and trot away.
In the end, while it is technically possible for a group of humans to devise a way to cause
a cow to tip over, it is, in the practical sense, impossible in the way generally illustrated
when stereotypically inebriated individuals are described as tipping cows.
So where did the idea of cow tipping come from?
Unfortunately, the answer is that no one knows for sure.
It has been hypothesized that the practice of attempting cow tipping probably came about
via serving the same function as snipe hunting- sending a gullible individual out to perform
some impossible task for the amusement of those in the know.
(Although it should be noted that this is a potentially very dangerous snipe hunting
style game, particularly if there is a bull around in the herd.)
As for how this particular "game" entered the mainstream, stories of it began popping
up in the late 20th century and it particularly gained steam thanks to such movies as Heathers
(1989) and Tommy Boy (1995), along with a Season 4 episode of Beavis and Butthead titled
"Cow Tipping" (1994) where the duo failed in their attempt at tipping a horse, then
were successful at tipping a cow which landed on Beavis.
More recently, the 2006 Pixar film Cars depicts Mater and Lightning tipping cow-like tractors.
Speaking of things falling over, the ladies!
Who will no doubt be swooning left and right when they see you walking around looking ultra
dapper in clothes you acquired from Mack Weldon!
Bonus Facts: Speaking of drunken dares, let us now introduce
you to the amazing story of Thomas Fitzpatrick, known to his friends as Tommy Fitz.
For the first part of this story, late in evening (or rather early in the morning) of
September 30, 1956, as Tommy was leaving a tavern on St. Nicholas Avenue in Manhattan
to return home to New Jersey, Tommy bet one of his buddies he could make it back to the
bar from New Jersey in a mere 15 minutes.
This, of course, is impossible by car.
So after leaving the bar on that September night, Tommy traveled to the Teterboro School
of Aeronautics in New Jersey where he then stole a single-engine plane.
Hoping to evade authorities until his return task was completed, he took off without lights
at around 3:00 a.m.
According to reports, his original plan was to land the plane at the field of George Washington
High School, just a few blocks from the tavern, but since its lights weren't on that morning,
a drunken Tommy chose to land the plane in front of the tavern itself on St. Nicholas
Avenue near its intersection with 191st street- managing to thread the needle, successfully
avoiding lamp posts and parked cars in his landing.
Of course, landing a plane in the middle of a street in Manhattan was bound to get noticed
and the cops were called in.
Eventually charged with grand larceny, Tommy was never convicted since the plane's owner,
presumably amused by the whole thing and with no harm done to his plane, refused to press
charges; however, since the city's ordinances prohibited landing planes on its streets,
Tommy was fined $100 (about $800 today) and had his pilot's license suspended for six
months.
Just over two years later, again after imbibing at a Washington Heights bar, Tommy told the
story of his first flight to fellow patrons of the bar, when one of them had the gall
to question the authenticity of the story.
His honor besmirched, at about 1:00 a.m. on October 4, 1958, the inebriated Tommy again
went to the Teterboro School of Aeronautics in New Jersey and "borrowed" a plane to fly
back to New York City.
This time he landed the plane at the nearby intersection of Amsterdam and 187th Street.
After landing the plane, he initially fled the scene.
However, when police were called in and once again found themselves with a plane sitting
in the middle of a Manhattan street, and recalling the unique incident two years before just
a few blocks away, they decided to go investigate and see if Mr. Fitz had something to do with
this one too.
At first, he reportedly denied it, but witnesses who saw him exit the plane and run off claimed
it was him, ultimately inspiring Fitz to confess.
He later succinctly summed up his decision making paradigm in choosing to perform the
feat again, stating, "It's the lousy drink."
With this second incident, there was no mercy.
The magistrate judge, Ruben Levy, threw the book at him saying, "Had you been properly
jolted then, it's possible this would not have occurred a second time."
The 28 year old Tommy Fitz was sentenced to six months in prison for transporting stolen
property.
Beyond his flying escapades and little stint in prison, Tommy Fitz had a full life, serving
as a Marine in the Korean War and earning a Purple Heart, enjoying a 51-year marriage
to his apparently understanding wife, Helen, having three sons, working as a steamfitter
and living to the ripe old age 79, dying in 2009.