Compared to other mammals, cows are generally not considered to be particularly intelligent. But now a cow named “Veronika” is demonstrating the opposite. This relatively elderly cow, who lives on an organic farm in Austria, has mastered the art of flexible tool use: she uses a broom to specifically scratch herself on various parts of her body. To do this, the cow picks up the broom handle in its mouth and then moves the other end over its fur. She prefers the wide, bristle side of the broom for large-scale itching of the back and flanks, while the narrow end of the handle is used for more targeted scratching of more sensitive parts of the body. According to biologists, this is the first evidence of such flexible tool use in cattle.
Unlike great apes, dogs or even some birds, cows are not exactly considered the brightest lights in the animal kingdom. The cartoonist Gary Larson often caricatured this in his “Far Side Gallery,” in which he depicted animals in often all-too-human situations. He often depicted cows in his cartoons as rather stupid and clumsy. “This takes up a widespread assumption: according to this, cows are neither problem solvers nor tool users,” explain Antonio Osuna-Mascaró and Alice Auersperg from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. “But the cognitive abilities of farm animals are often underestimated.” In addition, the abilities of cows have hardly been studied despite their 10,000-year history of domestication. Research on cattle has mostly focused on their husbandry, milk production and fattening.
Bristles for the back, handle end for sensitive areas
Now a cow named “Veronika” proves that cows have more on their minds than is commonly thought. The Brown Swiss cow lives on an organic farm as a kind of pet: it is almost considered part of the family and has close contact with its owner Witgar Wiegele
and plenty of exercise. Around ten years ago, Wiegele observed that Veronika occasionally picked up sticks with her mouth and scratched herself with them. When the behavioral scientist Auersperg saw a video of this behavior, she became aware: “It was immediately clear to me that this behavior could not be just a coincidence,” she says. In order to get to the bottom of this cow’s abilities, Auersperg and her colleague Osuna-Mascaró visited the farm and carried out systematic tests with Veronika. They repeatedly placed brooms on the ground in different orientations and watched what the cow did with them.
And indeed: “We recorded 76 instances of tool use over the course of ten experimental runs,” report the biologists. The cow would take the broom style in its mouth, adjust its bite until the broom was aligned to its satisfaction and then use it to scratch itself on various parts of its body. “Veronika doesn’t just use an object to scratch herself: she uses different parts of this tool for different purposes and uses different techniques, depending on the region of the body and type of use,” explains Auersperg. The cow prefers the end of the broom with bristles for large parts of the body such as its back or the sides of the torso and scratches itself there with long, powerful movements. However, for softer, more sensitive areas of the body such as the stomach or udder, the cow switches to the rounded, narrow end of the stem. Their movements are much more cautious and smaller, as the researchers observed.
First evidence of flexible tool use in a cow
According to Auersperg and Osuna-Mascaró, the cow Veronika demonstrates for the first time that cattle can also use tools. It is also the first case of flexible use of a multi-purpose tool in this species. Because the cow uses the two very different ends of the broom specifically and consistently for different purposes. “Comparable behavior has so far only been observed in chimpanzees,” say the researchers. Using a tool on your own body, as in the case of scratching, is generally considered to be less complex and demanding than manipulating other objects with it. “The cow has significant physical limitations because it can only manipulate its tools with its mouth,” explains Osuna-Mascaró. But it is amazing how well she compensates for these limitations by adapting her bite and her movements accordingly.
“Although they have been domesticated for thousands of years, farm animals have been almost completely excluded from the discussion about animal intelligence,” write Auersperg and Osuna-Mascaró. “Veronika’s case now reveals that the ability to solve technical problems is not limited to species with large brains, hands or beaks.” However, the current observations also raise the question of why these abilities of cows were not noticed earlier. The biologists attribute this to the living conditions of most cattle: Most cows live in stables or on pastures without access to potential tools. In addition, most cattle kept as dairy cattle or as meat suppliers die relatively early. They therefore have little opportunity to acquire these skills. Veronika, on the other hand, is relatively old, lives under favorable conditions and has many opportunities to explore and try out new things, as the researchers explain. They now want to further investigate the circumstances under which other cattle and livestock species may also show previously overlooked abilities. “We suspect that such abilities are more widespread than previously documented,” says Osuna-Mascaró.
Source: Antonio Osuna-Mascaró and Alice Auersperg (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna), Current Biology, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.059