Last week an Indian government agency announced it will host a voluntary nationwide online exam on “cow science” on February 25. The multiple-choice exam is free and anyone can take part. According to the agency’s website, “the successful and meritorious will be given cash prize / certificate in a ceremony.”

On the day of the announcement, the agency responsible for the exam, the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA), published a study guide on its website. The document was later taken offline but can still be viewed here. The 54-page text includes such diverse bovine trivia as how cow slaughter causes earthquakes and why milk from Indian cattle contains “traces of gold” and is more nutritious than that of the “exotic” Jersey cow.

To find out more, I called Amitabh Bhatnagar, who led the team which authored the study materials. Bhatnagar is the author of a book called “Cow: Our Ultimate Savior,” which he described as “the world's first book in English which is printed on paper made from cow dung.” He runs a company that sells cow-based products and gives lectures at Indian colleges on the health benefits and religious importance of “Gau Mata” or Mother Cow.

Bhatnagar described a few of these benefits. He claimed cows can enhance a person’s aura. “It increases aura of a person up to nearly 25 meters, that experiment also has been done. Usually, the aura of a person ends after one and a half meters or two meters.” He added that experiments have shown that one’s aura can be increased by circling around an “Indian native cow” in a Hindu ceremony known as Parikrama.