This tool-using cow stunned scientists with her smarts

A deck brush can be a good tool for the right task. Just ask Veronika, a Brown Swiss cow. She uses both ends of a deck brush to scratch various body parts. This makes her the first cow reported to use a tool.

Researchers shared Veronika’s clever itch-scratching trick on January 19 in Current Biology. People don’t often think of cows as especially intelligent, the scientists say. So spotting tool use in this species is pretty surprising.

A pet cow, Veronika lives in a pasture on a small farm in Austria. When she’s feeling itchy, she can pick up a long-handled brush with her tongue. Then she twists her neck to move the brush to just the spot that needs scratching.

Cows usually rub against things like trees or rocks to scratch themselves. But Veronika’s brush gives her access to hard-to-reach body parts, says Antonio Osuna-Mascaró. This expert in animal cognition worked on the new study. He’s based at the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria.

Osuna-Mascaró doesn’t know how Veronika figured out she could use long sticks this way. But “somehow Veronika learned to use tools,” he says. “And she’s doing something that other cows simply can’t.” 

Holy cow!

Osuna-Mascaró was part of a team that studied Veronika’s technique by setting the brush in front of her in different positions. To their surprise, which end of it she chose depended on which part of her body itched.

She used the brush end with hard bristles for most body parts. The tough, thick skin on her back, for example. But not for sensitive areas, such as her belly button or udder. To scratch these parts, the cow slowly moved the soft handle over the itchy spot.

“At the beginning, I thought that it was a mistake” when she used the handle to scratch, Osuna-Mascaró says. “But after observing Veronika for a little while, it was so obvious that she was using both tool ends in different ways.” 

Sometimes, Veronika even picked up the brush from the middle of the handle. This way, she could just turn her head side to side to use either end. “I thought it was very efficient not to have to regrip on the brush,” says Lindsay Matthews. He did not take part in the study. But he studies animal behavior at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

It would be interesting to test how Veronika handles other tools, such as ones with brushes on both ends, Matthews says.

As sharp as a cow?

Using the same tool in different ways is something that scientists have only seen before in chimpanzees. But clearly, such cleverness is not limited to chimps. Veronika shows that people may need to expand their idea of which animals are intelligent.

“People are happy to acknowledge that dolphins and so on are extremely clever,” says Matthews. “But I believe most animals are extremely clever if they’re given the right task.”

It’s important to remember that Veronika is just one cow. That she can use tools doesn’t mean all cows can, says Alice Auersperg. Like Osuna-Mascaró, she studies animal cognition at Messerli and worked on the new study.

Veronika isn’t necessarily “more intelligent than all other cows,” Auersperg says. This cow might have learned to use the brush because she lives as a pet on a small farm. She has a very different life than cows living on big industrial farms.

Veronika’s quiet country life might have given this cow freedom to explore her environment. Along the way, she was able to pick up some handy — or hoofy — new skills.