Never mind the bullocks, here’s the 5G cows

Government-funded agricultural project 5G RuralFirst has made an app that allows you to track the daily activities of a cow of your choice, live from its home on a connected farm.

Opportunities to enjoy 24-hour access to the movements of a po-faced mammal tolerating a confined space have been sparse since David Blaine vacated his plexiglass box above the Thames in 2003, and this is just the kind of PR gimmick cows have craved – especially after Knickers the giant steer swept the internet and won international adulation for their male counterparts last year, like some massive, hay-eating Jeremy Meeks.

Most of us go all daft for a bit of cow anthropomorphism. Not enough to stop stunning, slaughtering and consuming millions of them at industrial scale each year, but maybe enough to buy the occasional disc of Laughing Cow forgetting the profits don’t go to them, and certainly enough to download this app.

We wish we could say we arbitrarily connected with Augusta because her name was near the top of the list, but in truth we took great care finding the one that looked most in need of some love. Her profile reads, “It’s just a generalisation that us cows spend all day mooing. If anything, I’m better known around the farm for my snoring,” which is funnier than most Tinder bios, to be fair.