Why are cows a TikTok sensation? |
A farmer in Derbyshire is going to make his cows uglier to try and deter modern agricultural impostors. These impostors are neither foxes nor badgers but social media influencers who keep showing up to film content with his animals.
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They arrive in waves. On one occasion, dozens surrounded Alex Birch’s herd at the edge of a field. Another time, a yoga teacher unfurled her mat and filmed a class beside the cows, as though they were props in a bucolic stage set. Wearied by the intrusion, Birch now speaks of crossbreeding his Highland cows to make them ‘less photogenic’.
A nature reserve in Kent had to remove Highland cows when a ‘flood’ of camera-wielding visitors began to arrive not to commune with the creatures, but to film them, package them, and upload them. The Highland Cattle Society has urged people not to treat cows as ‘selfie props’ and the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said that although cows are often seen as ‘approachable’, they’re ‘still large, powerful livestock animals’.
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