Thought this was interesting. A review of Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson's book Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour in the new Nature:

There are two remarkable things about Temple Grandin. The first is that she has arguably done more than anyone else in the world to improve the welfare of animals in a practical way. Her major contribution has been to go into places that most of us would probably prefer not to think about — slaughterhouses — and imagine what it would be like to be an animal on its way to being killed. She has dramatically improved the welfare of these animals, not by making any expensive modifications to the slaughter plants but by suggesting simple changes that cost nothing, such as removing a yellow coat hanging over a grey fence, or altering the lighting to eliminate shiny reflections from a puddle. By removing stimuli that frighten cattle and cause them to stop and pile up on one another, the cattle move more easily, they don't slip and fall, and the use of electric goads is almost unnecessary

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Her autism, she believes, gives her a remarkable insight into the way animals see the world. Animals, like autists, concentrate on detail. It is obvious to her that the yellow coat would be a scary stimulus to a cow, but the rest of us, concentrating on the bigger picture, would simply not realize unless it was pointed out to us.