What level of water involvement qualifies a cow as a sea cow?

Agree. If we accept every cow near a pond, the registry becomes useless fast. Standing in water with no distress is the line where I start paying attention. cow near pond is not enough, sorry.

Contact and participation need seperate columns. A hoof can slip. Twelve minutes up to the knees reads like the animal signed the waterline log.

Shoreline pause should stay below hoof contact, imo, but not vanish. Put it in the notes. Half the useful stuff here starts as 'this probably isn't enough but...'

Hoof contact gets my attention. Belly line changes my posture. Swimming changes my blood pressure. There, three levels, no Latin needed.

A cow sniffing water is a cow sniffing water. I know because I submitted one in 2022 and everyone here still brings it up like family court.

Sniffing is pre-contact behavior. Worth noting if the subject later enters. Alone it is not a sea cow unless language has fully left the building.

This is where the land/water thing matters. Some animals approach dry, enter wet, leave dry. If we make one frame decide everything, we lose the route.

Entry route plus exit route should be above posture on the form. Sorry, posture people, but path is where the weirdness usually leaks out.

No. Above posture is too much. Next to posture, maybe. A still photo can show posture. Route needs witness memory, and witness memory does gymnastics.

Witness memory does gymnastics but so do cows when they see a gate they don't respect. I am not helping, just saying.

For shallow creeks I use: did the water alter the animal's movement, or was it just scenery under the hoof? crude test, works more often than not.

That test is good because it records participation without pretending we know intent. Intent discourse eats threads and then burps.

Moved two manatee-definition replies to the old terminology thread. This one is thresholds. If you need the cabinet fight, the cabinet fight is down the hall.

So a ditch cow can be discussion-worthy without being registry-worthy? That seems obvious typed out but it was not obvious at 3 AM, thanks.

Correct. Thread worthy means 'look at this with me.' Registry worthy means 'preserve this as a case.' Same board, higher bar. I know, tragic.

So now looking at water is evidence? cool. my uncle's cow looked at a hose yesterday, alert the papers.

Nobody said that, Kyle. We have invented paragraph two and I need you to experience it.

As the owner of the non-canon puddle cow I support a threshold because otherwise my shame becomes precedent and frankly the forum does not deserve that power.

ok actual method post before this turns into hose jokes for two pages.

one frame should not run the whole event. a dry first frame can still belong to a water-use sequence if the next frames or witness notes show entry, duration, and exit. same the other direction: a wet hoof frame with no entry, no duration, no return path, and no behavior is just a wet hoof frame. it can be interesting without being a case.

for me the usable stack is: 1. proximity, 2. contact, 3. participation, 4. route use. participation means the animal's behavior is organized around the water for more than an instant. route use means the water changes where it goes. this is why return path keeps coming up even when people are sick of hearing it.

none of that proves intent. it just keeps the thread from turning into people guessing what the cow wanted.