Veronika has a pretty nice life. She’s a pet cow living in a pleasant green field with a stunning view of the surrounding Austrian mountains. But sadly, she hasn’t been provided with a back-scratching butler, and as an outdoor cow exposed to insect bites, she has had to take matters into her own hands, I mean, hooves. To scratch those hard-to-reach places on her body, she’s learned how to use implements like sticks, brooms and rakes to deal with those itchy areas. Aaah, that’s the spot!
This Austrian cow has gone viral, thanks to her demonstrated use of tools. She represents the first observed bovine to display this skill. Tool use is thought to be a hallmark of intelligence because it shows the capability of higher-complexity cognitive processes such as planning, problem-solving and grasping cause-and-effect. A paper published this month in Current Biology posits that Veronika’s tool use suggests that the cognitive abilities of cows have been underestimated.
One of the scientific paper’s authors, Alice Auersperg, is a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Auersperg was intrigued when she watched video footage of Veronika’s scratching skills. “It was clear that this was not accidental,” she observed. “This was a meaningful example of tool use.” Auersperg and the paper’s co-author Antonio Osuna-Mascaro visited the farm where Veronika lives and, with the owner’s permission, conducted a series of randomized trials. They placed a deck scrub broom, chosen for its asymmetrical shape, in different orientations and recorded the cow’s reaction. During 10 trials, the scientists recorded 76 instances of Veronika using the broom in a deliberate manner. For each instance, Veronika used her tongue to lift and position the broom in her mouth, biting down to establish a firm grip. She would then use the broom to reach areas at the rear of her body, although which body areas she targeted for scratching dictated which end of the broom she would employ. For scratching her back and upper body, Veronika chose the brush end, moving the broom in a scrubbing motion. Conversely, she chose the stick end to scratch her more sensitive areas such as udders and belly skin and for those, she moved the brush in gentle pushes. For each type of motion, she anticipated the which sort of mouth grip she’d need to use and adjusted accordingly.
The authors conclude that this behavior demonstrates “goal-directed, context-sensitive tooling,” and situational adaptability in addition to fine-motor targeting. They specified that “the differential use of both broom ends constitutes the use of a multipurpose tool, exploiting distinct properties of a single object for different functions,” unique in the animal world, since “comparable behavior has only been consistently documented in chimpanzees.” It is possible that her unique environment (compared to most cows) and greater human interaction have allowed Veronika ‘s unusual cognitive abilities to emerge.
In light of this discovery, one wonders if Gary Larson would change his old views on the level of sophistication for the tools that cows might create. I think he needs to come out of retirement and retool (har!) his comic from the 1980’s.
I was going to draw a toolbelt-wearing handyman or plumber cow to accompany this story, but while looking for some baseline ideas I found this rather uncanny advert, which I think I need to share with you.
Gif sourced from BBC article and the video below.
BBC: "Cow astonishes scientists with rare use of tools," 1/20/26
ARS Technica: "Meet Veronika, the tool-using cow" by Jennifer Ouellette, 1/19/26
Screen Rant: "Gary Larson's 10 Funniest Far Side Comics About Cows" by Dalton Norman, 12/8/22
😂We arrogant humans are forever underestimating our fellow creatures.
Takes a lickin….