10/18/2026
On the edge of the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana, lions took cattle in broad daylight. Herds there get shut in at night and graze by themselves during the day. Most attacks came then.
A lion hunts by ambush. Dr. Neil Jordan and his team wanted to know what would happen if the cow seemed to be staring back.
They went to 14 herds that had just lost animals to lions. Early in the morning the cattle filed through a chute. On some of them the researchers stamped a pair of eyes on the rump with acrylic paint and a foam stencil. The eyes got a fresh coat about every four weeks.
From 2015 to 2018 the study followed 2,061 cattle. Eyes went on 683. Others got a plain painted cross, and 835 were left alone.
Lions and one leopard killed 15 of the unmarked cattle and four of those with crosses. Not one of the 683 with painted eyes was killed by a lion or a leopard. A hyena took one cow from each group, and the study left those out.
Jordan says the paint is only one tool. Predators could get used to it, and nobody knows yet what happens when every cow in a herd is painted.
All of it comes out of a can of paint.
