The Austrian Cow Turned Out to Be the Smartest and Puzzled Scientists 0 11

Although zoologists have observed tool use in relatively close species to humans — from primates to pigs — cows had not been seen doing this until now. The situation has changed: it turns out that they can use multifunctional tools in different ways depending on the circumstances.

Austrian farmer Witgar Wigele kept a brown Swiss cow named Veronica and noticed more than a decade ago that she used sticks to scratch herself. This issue can be quite acute for animals that are unable to scratch themselves in certain areas with their limbs, and cows fall into this category. The farmer approached scientists, and they tried to investigate the details of tool use by this animal.

Veterinarians from a local university conducted a series of experiments with the animal to understand its abilities. The results of their work were published in Current Biology. They hypothesized that if a cow consciously uses tools, then if given something that combines a stick and a brush, it would use the brush more often with the bristle part rather than the handle.

In practice, the situation turned out to be even more complex: Veronica used the handle more often for the lower part of her body, where the skin is thinner, and the bristle part of the tool for the thicker skin on her upper body. Apparently, the fine bristles were uncomfortable for her on the thin skin.

Thus, the animal did not simply use the brush on a long handle for scratching: she used different parts of the same tool for different purposes. The technique of movement also varied. She scratched her belly with the handle in slower and less vigorous movements, while she scratched her back more frequently and with more force.

Such multifunctional use of one tool with different parts has only been unambiguously documented for chimpanzees, the species most closely related to humans. This does not mean that other animals do not use tools (this is just a partial list, and the phenomenon has been actively studied since the 1960s). Pandas, for example, actively scratch themselves with twigs. However, multifunctional use of a single tool is a much rarer story.

The question arises: why has such behavior been observed in only one cow, despite their large numbers? The authors of the study noted that this cow is 13 years old, and most of her peers do not live to such an age because they are slaughtered earlier. Nevertheless, this hardly explains everything: the owner claims to have seen this cow using sticks a decade ago when she was only three years old.

Another possible answer is that Veronica is not an ordinary meat and dairy cow kept in a stall and grazed on limited pasture. She lives in open spaces, essentially serving as a companion animal. Ordinary cows have little opportunity to pick up sticks and the like because they are not present in their pens. But questions still arise, as there are many countries in Latin America where cows and bulls graze freely without a shepherd and have various opportunities to interact with branches and sticks. However, there are no reports of such tool use from there. This may be a result of simple inattention to such behavioral features.

The authors of the study suggested that such behavior may be widespread but simply has not been documented by scientists before. In this regard, they appealed to readers to inform them about similar animals if anyone has observed such behavior themselves. In comments to the media, the researchers mentioned that they have already found the first mentions of similar events for other cows. Unfortunately, they did not specify what kind of tool use was being referred to.