In 2005, researchers from the University of British Columbia studied the amount of force needed to tip a cow.
Approximately five people would be needed to generate the force (654.2lb) necessary to push over a cow if it were sleeping standing up, according to Dr. Margo Lillie and Tracy Boechler of the school’s zoology department.
The researchers used Newton’s Second Law, which states that force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration, to reach their conclusion.
“I suspect that even if a dynamic physics model suggests cow-tipping is possible, the biology ultimately gets in the way. A cow is simply not a rigid, unresponding body,” Dr. Lillie told the Times.