Someone is putting VR headsets on cows, and we want to know why

Let’s just be up front here: yes, these pictures seem to show a cow wearing a virtual reality headset, and no, we don’t really know what’s going on here.

You may have seen these images floating around social media followed by a trail of comments like “this is the dystopian future we were warned about” and “enter the mootrix.” They purportedly show an experiment being conducted in Russia to see if giving dairy cows VR headsets can reduce anxiety and increase milk yield, but — as you might have guessed — it’s not at all clear whether this is a genuine trial or an elaborate marketing stunt.

The story can be traced back to this (apparently serious) press...

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