A pet Swiss Brown cow named Veronika has become the first documented case of tool use in cattle, picking up a deck brush with her mouth and using different ends to scratch various parts of her body. The discovery, published in the journal Current Biology, shows that cows can engage in flexible, multi-purpose tool use, a trait scientists previously believed was limited to humans and chimpanzees. Researchers say Veronika’s behavior isn’t rare, but rather that most cattle simply lack the environment and time needed to develop such skills.
- Veronika uses the bristled end of a broom for thick-skinned areas like her back and switches to the smooth handle for sensitive spots like her belly.
- At 13 years old, Veronika has lived significantly longer than most livestock, giving her time to learn and perfect her tool-using techniques.
- Robert Shumaker, President of the Indianapolis Zoo and evolutionary biologist, says “there’s absolutely no question that this is tool use” and is excited to see cows added to the list of tool-using animals.
How a Baker’s Pet Cow Changed Animal Science
The story begins more than a decade ago with Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and traditional baker in the small Austrian town of Nötsch im Gailtal. Wiegele first observed that his family’s pet Swiss Brown cow, Veronika, would sometimes pick up sticks and use them to scratch herself, presumably to alleviate skin irritation from insects. He sent a video of the behavior to cognitive biologist Alice Auersperg at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.
When Auersperg saw the footage, she said “it was immediately clear that this was not accidental.” She and her colleague Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró traveled to meet Veronika, and what they found astonished them. The cow wasn’t randomly rubbing against an object. She was deliberately selecting tools, adjusting her grip, and applying different techniques depending on what part of her body needed scratching.
The Science Behind Veronika’s Scratching Skills
To test how far her tool-use capabilities went, the researchers performed a series of controlled trials in which they placed a deck brush in front of the cow in various orientations, recording which end she selected and the body region she targeted when scratching herself. The results were consistent and deliberate.
Veronika precisely manipulated the broom with her mouth, using her tongue to lift it and her teeth to secure it in place, targeting the thick-skinned upper areas of her body with the bristled end and the more sensitive underparts with the smooth stick end, scrubbing more vigorously on tougher parts of her skin and using gentle pushes on her delicate parts.
Researchers observed how her upper-body scratching involves wide, forceful movements, while her lower-body scratching is slower, more careful, and highly controlled. This kind of flexible, multi-purpose tool use changes how we understand animal intelligence.
Why Haven’t We Seen This Before?
There are around 1.5 billion heads of cattle in the world, and humans have lived with them for at least 10,000 years, making it “shocking that we’re only discovering this now,” says Osuna-Mascaró. But the researchers don’t think Veronika is special. Her circumstances are.
As a much-loved pet, she has been allowed access to wide-open spaces, daily human interaction and given the freedom to explore and experiment in her environment, and at 13, she is also far older than most livestock cows are allowed to become. Most livestock animals, in contrast, live much shorter lives and spend their time in impoverished settings such as factory farms without access to objects that they can manipulate.
Researchers don’t believe that Veronika is the “Einstein of cows,” and it is likely that there are many other cows, bulls and farm animals with this ability that have gone unnoticed. Given the right conditions, other cattle would probably develop similar skills.
What This Means for Farm Animals
Cows and other animals are “far too often written-off as being dumb and lacking emotions,” but “detailed research shows they are fully sentient beings with very active brains and deep emotional lives,” according to Marc Bekoff, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The Indianapolis Zoo’s Robert Shumaker, who co-authored a recent book on animal tool use, wasn’t surprised by the findings. The discovery builds on decades of research showing that many species are far more capable than we give them credit for. When Jane Goodall discovered in 1960 that chimpanzees make and use tools, it challenged the belief that only humans could use tools and completely changed how we viewed chimpanzees.
Veronika’s scratching shows that cows can use tools in a flexible, multi-functional way, and until now, the only other animals thought able to do this were humans and chimpanzees. That’s a pretty exclusive club, and Veronika gained admission.
Could Your Cow Be a Tool User Too?
The researchers plan to further study Veronika’s capabilities and invite anyone who has personally experienced a farm animal using an object as a tool to contact them via email or social media. They suspect this behavior might be far more common than documented.
Scientists say “we know more about the tool use of exotic animals on remote islands than we do about the cows we live with.” Maybe it’s time we paid closer attention to the animals right in front of us. After all, if a cow in Austria can pick up a broom and scratch her own back with precision and purpose, what other abilities have we been missing?
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