{"id":24801,"date":"2026-06-21T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T17:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=24801"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:38:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:38:03","slug":"researchers-set-up-therapy-session-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/researchers-set-up-therapy-session-new\/24801\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers set up a therapy session at a New York sanctuary, and the two Holstein steers who showed up had a strong, unexpected opinion about who they wanted to cuddle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picture a small farm in upstate New York on a clear morning, two young Holstein steers grazing in a sunlit field while a researcher watches every move they make<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The volunteers who arrive expect to do something ordinary, a gentle, almost sleepy way to spend a morning.<\/p>\n

What the cows do next is anything but<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A Dutch tradition that crossed an ocean<\/h2>\n

The practice has a name in Dutch, koeknuffelen, which translates directly to cow cuddling or cow hugging<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It grew out of a Netherlands custom of leaving the city for the countryside to spend time with farm animals and reset.<\/p>\n

The idea traces back to the rural town of Reuver, built on the notion that the simple presence of a farm animal carries real healing power<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Unlike the better known therapies built around dogs or horses, cow cuddling offers something different, an invitation to slow down and connect with nature in an unusually intimate way.<\/p>\n

Farmers in Reuver noticed decades ago that visitors who spent even an hour in a barn left visibly calmer, shoulders dropped, breathing slower. That is the kind of plain observation that eventually pulls scientists in.<\/p>\n

What a thousand pound therapist feels like<\/h2>\n

A cow’s warmer body, slower heartbeat and sheer size make hugging one a surprisingly soothing<\/strong> experience.<\/p>\n

Backrubs, leaning against a warm flank, even being licked all become part of the encounter.<\/p>\n

When a person touches or lies beside the animal, the body releases oxytocin, the hormone tied to feelings of happiness and lower stress.<\/p>\n

Gentle touch lowers blood pressure and calms the nervous system, and it works whether you are the one holding or the one being held.<\/p>\n

Often called the cuddle hormone<\/strong>, oxytocin helps people feel connected and calm while lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol.<\/p>\n

There is something almost architectural about it too. A full grown steer weighs roughly half a ton, and when it presses its warm side against your back, the pressure alone reaches the same calming pathways that weighted blankets are built to find.<\/p>\n

The sanctuary where science paid close attention<\/h2>\n

Researchers ran their study at Surrey Hills Sanctuary in New York State, bringing in 11 volunteers<\/strong> aged 13 to 79 to spend time with two young Holstein steers named Magnus and Callum.<\/p>\n

Six of the volunteers were women and girls, five were men and boys, a very small group by any measure.<\/p>\n

Each person spent at least 45 minutes with one of the steers, whose temperaments differed, Magnus leaning into contact while Callum took more patience before he settled.<\/p>\n

Afterward, participants filled out a survey and talked through which moments had felt mutual and which had felt one sided.<\/p>\n

The team measured it all with a standard scale built to capture both how much a person engages an animal and how much the animal seems to engage back.<\/p>\n

The data that came back surprised the people<\/strong> who had designed the experiment.<\/p>\n

The steers had a clear favourite, and it surprised everyone<\/h2>\n

The steers showed a strong preference<\/a> for time with women over men, and the women in turn reported stronger attachment<\/strong> to the animals.<\/p>\n

Women and girls described far more moments of being licked, of the steers taking food from their hands, of the animals responding when they tried a little training.<\/p>\n

Across this small group the pattern was consistent enough to stand out, much the way an overlooked animal in New York<\/a> can reveal something no one was looking for.<\/p>\n

The researchers are careful here. They cannot yet say whether the steers actively sought out women, or whether women were simply more likely to reach out first.<\/p>\n

They are also clear that this was a pilot study<\/strong>, too small to prove anything on its own. Even so, the finding opens a real question, whether some therapies may land differently by gender, not just by method.<\/p>\n

What it means for the cows, and for the rest of us<\/h2>\n

One result mattered as much as the gender finding. The team concluded the sessions were not only good for the people but enriching for the cattle<\/a>, who stayed close and stayed engaged the whole time.<\/p>\n

Animal assisted therapy is meant to work alongside approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, complementing professional care rather than replacing it.<\/p>\n

Very little research<\/strong> has looked at farm animals this way, even though cows can bond with people in ways shaped by their size and calm, the same surprise found when animals adapt<\/a> to a human world.<\/p>\n

Magnus and Callum nudged their way into the scientific record that morning in upstate New York.<\/p>\n

It turns out that a thousand pound animal leaning its warm weight against you, and seeming to choose you<\/strong>, may be one of the stranger and more genuine kinds of comfort that modern psychology has ever measured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture a small farm in upstate New York on a clear morning, two young Holstein steers grazing in a sunlit field while a researcher watches every move they make. The volunteers who arrive expect to do something ordinary, a gentle, almost sleepy way to spend a morning. What the cows do next is anything but. A Dutch … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":24916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"researchers set up","rank_math_title":"Researchers set up a therapy session at a New York sanctuary, and the two Holstein steers who showed up had a strong, unexpected opinion about who they wanted to cuddle","rank_math_description":"A real study at a New York sanctuary found therapy cows strongly preferred women over men \u2014 and science has a fascinating explanation for what was really happening.","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}