Cowbell

[citation needed] Different bells can have specific sounds to identify important characteristics of the animals, such as age, sex, and species.

They are mainly used in Europe, Mediterranean areas and Latin America, but are also used worldwide by those who practice transhumance, including nomadic pastoral tribes in Africa and Asia.

The earliest depictions of bells used for livestock in Britain appear on Pictish carved stones of the 7th to 9th centuries AD at Eassie, Angus[9] and Fowlis Wester, Perthshire.

[11] An early depiction of a bellwether, the leading sheep of a flock, on whose neck a bell is hung, is in the Carolingian Stuttgart Psalter of the ninth century.

The OED also attributes the phrase "to bear the bell" in the sense "to take the first place" as originally referring to the leading cow or sheep of a drove or flock to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, 1374.

[citation needed] The wider distribution of the bell worn by livestock was a gradual process of the Early Modern period.

The legend of the Simmental tells how a young cowherd strays inside a mountain, and is offered by a beautiful woman the choice between a treasure of gold coins, a golden Trychel, or the fairy herself.

Modern-day manufacturing of cow bells continues today in Korea, Indonesia, and India, many created as village handicrafts.

[14] In Western Europe, when the snow has melted in the spring, villages send the cows to the high alpine meadows to graze.

[17] A study[18] published in 2015 found that wearing a bell over three days caused cows to spend less time feeding, ruminating, and lying down.