In Botswana, conservation biologists spent years painting enormous fake eyes onto the backsides of over two thousand cattle, betting on a simple piece of predator psychology — that a lion who thinks it’s been spotted usually abandons the hunt

Out on the fringes of the Okavango Delta, several hundred cattle once wandered around with enormous eyes painted on their backsides, and not one of them got eaten by a lion. He was in Botswana, a lion was stalking an impala, and the impala looked up at the wrong moment for the lion. Painting happened at dawn as the animals filed through the crush, with acrylic paint and foam stencils glued to a plasterer’s float. A sceptic would object that the painted cattle simply got lucky, or stayed closer to home. Eyes get inside human heads tooAnyone inclined to feel superior to the lions should know it works on humans too.