At least these artists had actually seen a cow. There are some hilarious medieval artworks of lions where the artist had clearly never seen a lion.
https://www.sadanduseless.com/medieval-lion-art/
As with a magic trick, the delight resides more in the mystery than the solution, and this article spends its time appropriately. Were the answer given too quickly - were the reader not given the opportunity to marinate for a time in the oddness of the phenomenon, while being drip-fed increasingly outlandish examples - the impact of the reveal at the end would be lost. The punchline is the recontextualization of what we think of as "art" as functional objects, and it is only through being invited to ponder for ourselves for a time that we are prevented from pretending that we understood this all along.
Only explanation:
No physicists were involved in painting these cows.
(Everybody knows that physicists only know spherical cows)
Kind regards,
Roel (yes, physicist by origin)