Here’s a fun fact that’s been floating around the Internet and recently made its way into a Reddit Today I Learned post: Cows moo in different accents based on their region. But is it actually true?

I have to admit—I would love for this to be true. The idea of a cow mooing with something akin to a cow’s version of a southern drawl is hilarious and cute, and, frankly, the best thing ever (well, next to cows attentively checking out some jazz).

And I wasn’t the only one imagining what a cow’s moo would supposedly sound like in different regions either.

As one Reddit user writes:

It turns out, this fun fact stems from a 2006 BBC article, which suggests that cows have regional accents.

From the article:

“Farmer Lloyd Green, from Glastonbury, said: ‘I spend a lot of time with my ones and they definitely moo with a Somerset drawl.’ “John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London, said ‘This phenomenon is well attested in birds. You find distinct chirping accents in the same species around the country. This could also be true of cows.'”

I’m sure farmer Lloyd is a swell guy and all, but a random farmer’s testimony isn’t the most reliable source. After searching and hunting for studies on this topic, I came up empty-handed, which makes the claims even more dubious.

Even the only scientist quoted in the article—Professor John Wells—wasn’t supporting the claims.

In a publicly released email to the University of Pennsylvania, Wells wrote:

“They had been engaged by a cheese manufacturer, West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers, to publicize their regional varieties of cheese. They telephoned me to ask whetheer there was any possibility that cows’ moos might vary geographically. I told them I thought it highly unlikely; but that there was well established scientific evidence that several species of bird exhibit regional variability in their calls, so you could not entirely rule out the possibility. (To see some evidence re birds, do a Google search on “avian dialects.”) “Cows, of course, do not in general form stable isolated populations such as would presumably be necessary to allow such regional diversity to develop. On the contrary, cattle are bought and sold and trucked around the country and indeed internationally. “The next thing I knew was that the PR people had put out a press release with their selective and garbled version of what I had said.”

There you have it! Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, folks!

While Professor Wells may have been tricked by a PR agency (or simply misunderstood), it doesn’t mean that cow’s moos are completely meaningless.

While cows probably don’t have regional accents (boo), they do have a sort of moo language of their own. Seriously! In a 2014 study led by a team from the University of Nottingham, researchers found that cows make distinct moo sounds to communicate different things to their calves.

For example, when cows were closer to their young, they communicated with soft, quiet moos. When farther away, their moos grew louder. And calves called to their mothers with a distinct moo whenever they wanted to feed.

Lead researcher, Mónica Padilla, said in a press release: “The research shows for the first time that mother-offspring cattle ‘calls’ are individualized—each calf and cow have a characteristic and exclusive call of their own. Acoustic analysis also reveals that certain information is conveyed within the calf call—age, but not gender.”

Of course, we can’t end an article about cow moos, without including Sir Patrick Stewart’s WTF-am-I-listening-to? imitation of a cow’s moo (for the record, he’s convinced that posh cows have different accents from poor, “industrial” cows, as evidenced by this amazing and freakin’ hilarious clip from NPR).