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Cow tipping, often considered an urban legend, is a pastime allegedly common in rural areas. Participants sneak up on an upright, sleeping cow and push it over for amusement. There are factors which make the possibility unlikely; one such factor being that cows (as with most herd-prey animals) only take irregular naps throughout the day, often surrounded by awake members of the herd, making them almost impossible to sneak up on.

A variety of calculations have been applied to the physics of cow tipping, sometimes with humorous intention.

In popular culture

• Cow tipping is parodied in the animated film Cars, when Mater takes Lightning McQueen tractor tipping in the middle of the night. The theme then repeats several times during the course of the film.
• In the film Tommy Boy, Tommy, and Paul try their hand at cow tipping, but are unsuccessful. In one episode of Ben 10, Ben and some other boys try their hand at cow tipping.
• In an episode of MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head, a cow is tipped by the two of them.
• In a Rugrats All Grown Up episode (or maybe movie) where they visit a farm and Susie tries to tip a cow (and ends up succeeding in the end)
• It is mentioned in That '70s Show as something the kids did.
• In 1991, NPR broadcast a half-hour radio play called "Cow Tipping," a comedy about five hapless college-aged cow tippers in Illinois. Produced by the Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop.
• It is an often discussed topic on the popular breakfast radio show Foxy and Tom.
• In the computer video game Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, there is a random encounter on the world map that puts the player characters into a field with cows that can be tipped.
• In the Drawn Together episode "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", Wooldoor Sockbat and Ling-Ling pushed Toot Braunstein over while she was standing in a field eating grass, causing her to moo. The joke is that Toot is always being made fun of for being fat (like a cow) - this particular exaggeration follows another character's statement that Toot is "the same joke over and over".
• In the movie Heathers, Veronica and Heather go on a double date on which their dates tip a cow into mud which splatters on both of them.
• In the beginning of the movie Larva two teenagers agree to tip over a cow in exchange for a strip-tease performed by their girlfriends, they succeed in tipping the cow because it has already been eaten from the inside by something, they are instantly and unknowingly infected.
• In the Online Role Playing game Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty cow tipping is possible but can be deadly. http://members.cox.net/shizukana/gate-shot.htm
• In 2006 the New York rock group Little Willies, comprising Norah Jones, Richard Julian, Lee Alexander, Jim Campilongo and Dan Reiser recorded a song written by Jones, Alexander and Julian called “Lou Reed”. The song claimed that the singer Lou Reed had been sighted in Texas cow tipping.

References

1. Semke, Matt. "The Statics of Cow Tipping". UNL College of Engineering and Mechanics Course Project. Retrieved 2007-04-17.
2. Malvern, Jack. "Cow-tipping myth hasn't got a leg to stand on". Times Online. Retrieved 2006-10-28.
3. "The Mechanics of Cow Tipping" (PDF). University of British Columbia "Physics of Zoology" course document. 2003-04-09. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2005-03-20.

External links

• The Lost Art of Cow Tipping
• The Most Urban of All Urban Legends
• The Times article on Cow Tipping by Jack Malvern
• Cow Tipping: An Urban Legend - a satirical look at both sides of the argument.
• About.com: Florida to consider ban on cow tipping.
• The Register article debunking the myth of cow tipping while drunk by Lester Haines
• Straight Dope article - Discusses whether it is possible.

• Cattle
• Urban legends
• Practical jokes