Tricking a lion into believing it has been spotted as it creeps up to attack a cow, could just save its life from angry cattle herders.

African lions and leopards are at risk from farmers retaliating over killed cattle, and an Australian scientist is trying to help.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 8 minutes 12 seconds 8 m Conservation biologist Dr Neil Jordan discusses research to prevent lion predation of beef cattle in Botswana. ( Lisa Herbert ) Download 3.8 MB

The beef herds are valuable in Botswana which is why conservation biologists are keen to minimise these wildlife/livestock conflicts.

Speaking to ABC Rural from a camp not far from the famous wilderness sanctuary the Okavango Delta, Dr Neil Jordan is a long way from Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo and the University of New South Wales where he lectures.

Having just arrived in Botswana, where he will be for the next three months, he is working with farmers and the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust to further explore promising research that is changing the way lions and leopards look at cattle as prey.

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By painting intimidating eye-patterns on the behinds of cows, researchers hope to trick the big cats into thinking they have been seen.

Dr Jordan calls this "psychological trickery".

"Lions and leopards are ambush predators that rely on the element of surprise to sneak up and take down their prey.

"Once the animal sees them the big cats often give up on their hunt, because they rely on the element of surprise," he said.

"We're trying to interrupt their hunting pattern."

Dr Neil Jordon paints intimidating eye-patterns onto a cow's rump in Botswana. ( Supplied: Neil Jordan )

A small study of eye painting was conducted last year involving a beef cattle herd of 62 head.

It showed promising signs.

None of 23 cows that had eyes painted on their rumps were attacked, yet three of the 39 unpainted cows were killed by lions in a three month period.

"We estimate that we're losing about 20 times as many lions to retaliatory killings in human/wildlife conflict than are taken by the trophy hunting industries."

Dr Jordan's current work in Botswana aims to broaden the research.

"I'm back here to increase the sample size and really test whether it stands the test of time.

"We've had a lot of interest from around different areas of Africa.

"It's a simple, cheap and easy thing to do so we may take up some of these offers and expand our study."

Unfortunately the eye painting technique is unlikely to be successful in Australia where wild dog attacks on livestock is a multi-million problem for livestock producers.

"Australian wild dogs and dingoes are cursorial predators that run down their prey," said Dr Jordan.

"They don't care if they've been seen by their prey so interrupting that particular mechanism is not going to work."