image: Gregory Berns with members of his herd of miniature Zebu cattle.
Credit: Photo by Carol Clark
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, moved from Atlanta to a farm an hour south of the city. His reinvention from city dweller to farmer led to his upcoming book “Cowpuppy: An Unexpected friendship and a Scientist’s Journey into the Secret World of Cows.”
Set for publication by Harper Collins on August 20, the book describes Berns’ crash course to becoming a cattleman and his ongoing fascination with the interior world of cows.
Berns originally bought a few cows to keep the grass in the pastures down. He writes about how he forged a deep bond with his herd as he learned each of their distinct personalities while helping them to give birth, to grow and to stay healthy. He senses a wide range of human emotions in them and finds their presence therapeutic.
“I started seeing the world through a cow’s eyes,” he says. “There’s a common misconception that cows are dumb animals but that’s just because most people haven’t had the opportunity to interact with them. I decided it was time to set the record straight on cow brains.”
Berns, an Emory professor of psychology, pioneered the use of brain imaging technologies to understand human motivation and decision-making. In 2012, his lab was the first to train dogs to enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine to lie awake and perfectly still while their brain activity was recorded.
This unique approach to explore canine cognition led Berns to become a bestselling author with the publication of “How Dogs Love Us” in 2013. It is just one of many popular books by Berns, including, in 2022, “The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent — and Reinvent — Our Identities.”
“Cowpuppy” marks a new chapter in Berns’ quest to understand interspecies bonding.
His 10 miniature Zebu cattle gather around him like affectionate dogs when he enters the pasture. They even lie down and roll over so he can give them belly rubs. In return, they nuzzle him and give him cow licks.
“Cows are intelligent, emotional and loyally affectionate,” Berns says. “I’ve seen them do things that I haven’t even seen dogs do — like understanding how to use a giant mirror I erected in the pasture.”
His cows have become part of his family and will never wind up as hamburgers or steaks. Instead, Berns describes how cows teach people to slow down and connect to the environment.
He writes about leaning against the hulk of a cow chewing its cud in the evenings while he marvels at the stars: “Whenever I felt the weight of life’s challenges, I sought out the cows. I often found myself drifting off into a meditative state after these sessions. I felt relaxed in a way that I hadn’t before.”