Cowboy bowline Various tests of the different versions' strengths show little difference; conjecture about either knot's vulnerability to some failure remain pretty much only that – conjectures. As for the tail of a regular bowline finishing "inside the loop [ eye]", that is more a formal-image state than one of an actual knot, as the draw of the standing part will pull the tail around so that it actually points away from the eye, but there are various ways the knot can be dressed to affect this aspect. There is a rule of thumb which states that the loose end should be
Mutation (knot theory) endpoints of the tangle. There is also a rotation that results from composition of the reflections. A mutation replaces the original tangle by a tangle given by any of these operations. The result will always be a knot and is called a mutant of "K". Mutants can be difficult to distinguish as they have a number of the same invariants. They have the same hyperbolic volume (by a result of Ruberman), and have the same HOMFLY polynomials. Mutation (knot theory) In the mathematical field of knot theory, a mutation is an operation on a knot that can produce different knots.