Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows. Brown Swiss cow in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways (using both ends of a brush counts as multi-purpose tool use) – something extraordinarily rare only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jan/19/back-scratching-cow-veronika-bovine-intelligence
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**Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows**
**Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees**
Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use.
Wiegele said Veronika began playing with pieces of wood years ago, then worked out how to scratch herself with sticks. He said she also recognised family members’ voices and hurried to meet them when they called.
“I was naturally amazed by her extraordinary intelligence and thought how much we could learn from animals: patience, calmness, contentment, and gentleness,” he said.
Word soon got around and before long a video clip of the cow’s behaviour reached biologists in Vienna who specialise in animal intelligence. They immediately grasped the importance of the footage. “It was a cow using an actual tool,” said Dr Antonio Osuna Mascaró at the city’s University of Veterinary Medicine. “We got everything ready and jumped in the car to visit.”
Veronika favoured the bristled end of the broom to scratch the tough skin on her back. But she switched to the smooth handle and scratched more gently when the itch was on more delicate, lower body areas such as her udders and belly, according to the study in Current Biology.
“At the beginning I thought this was the result of a mistake. Perhaps Veronika was not careful enough when selecting her tool for self-scratching,” Osuna Mascaró said. “But after a while we started to observe a pattern: Veronika indeed had a preference for using the broom end, but when she used the handle end she was doing so in a meaningful way.”
Tool use is well known in chimps, crows, dolphins and even octopuses. The latter have been filmed throwing shells at one another. But livestock have never been considered the sharpest of animals.
Veronika is far from making even misshapen tools, but her prowess in using them has impressed nonetheless. Over seven sessions of 10 trials, the researchers witnessed 76 instances of tool use as she grabbed the broom to scratch otherwise unreachable regions. **Using both ends of the brush counts as multi-purpose tool use, the scientists say, which is extraordinarily rare. Beyond humans, it has only been shown convincingly in chimpanzees.**
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01597-0
Ravens also know how to use tools.
Typical underestimation of non-human animals by humans
If we managed to miss that cows can use a tool (in multiple ways no less) what else are we missing?!?
Sentient creatures also do not want to suffer. My dog, a cat, a bird, a fish, a cow, horse, camel, elephant, killer whale, and for the love of any possible god an octopus. *not a complete list.
I grew up on a farm. They’re a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. This is a wild find though
We have a joke we’re I’m from about deer, in a few thousand years we’ll have to give them a senators seat.
Have we been joking about the wrong species??
Yeah nah, plenty of birds are also recorded having done so. Specifically, cockatoos are known to fashion multipurpose tools from scratch, use them for various tasks, teach and learn from each other, and even iterate with better tools and tool fashioning processes.
This article reeks of big cow trying to influence people to not eat beef.
We’ve seen crows make their own tools, without different groups having different designs for the same tool even. Just to contest the claim in the title.
Idk how to explain it. But what if the cows are just using whatever side is there cause it’s there. Like we assume the cows are like “oh look there are 2 sides, I can use this side for “x” and this side for “z” when in reality the cow is just really like “oh look, a side of something”.
Do they undoubtedly distinguish the two?
Cows arent stupid, when i worked on a farm back in highschool we had ones that would use their tongues to unlock gates, multiple styles too, some deadbolt, some chain.
Also cows have BFFs and rivalries too, ill never forget when one of the really friendly cows died from a twisted bowel, her friend from birth laid beside her and wailed making a sound I had never heard a cow make when we took her out with a tractor.
Lots of animals are smarter than people realize, people these days just lack empathy even for their fellow man, you see it in public all the time.
Gary Larson has known about cow tools since the 80s.
I’ve never understood why there’s so much focus on using tools
Animals other than primates are known to use tools. Crows for instance. The last sentence is just wrong.
Similar to goats, cows are a LOT smarter than we give them credit for.
It seems folks assume that an animal doesn’t have hands/arms similar to ours, they’re not considered capable of tool use.
Hell, even crows and octopi are brilliant tool users and puzzle solvers.
We massively underestimate the intelligence of Animals.
Reminds me of human speech and contemplation and how the only other Species we’ve definitively seen it in is Birds, specifically birds that mimic human speech.
There’s likely so much we just cant understand with that Language barrier
The corvids would like a word.
“Why do the things vegans keep arguing for turn out to be true all the time??”
Truly a puzzle for the ages, I think. A good place for self reflection.
The headline (contradicted in the article) “humans and chimpanzees” is NOT AT ALL TRUE! DOZENS of animals have demonstrated tool use, orangutans, parrots, crows, octopii etc…etc…have demonstrated tool use.
It’s interesting that an individual cow has exhibited it but it’s not earth-shattering (they use cattle brushes regularly for example).
I really don’t think humans have paid enough attention to all the other animals. I knew we were a self obsessed species but every day the size of our ignorance feels more clear.
Gary Larson’s Cow Tools was right!
They’ve been watching how things are going. They realize they will need to take over from humans soon.
That cow seems pretty slender.
I think all animals are tool using animals they just don’t have as good tool-using apparatuses as us and apes.
Back-scratching in cows linked to head-scratching in humans.
More Veronika: [https://www.cell.com/cms/asset/4acce610-7f1b-4a44-b944-64127591af78/mmc4.mp4](https://www.cell.com/cms/asset/4acce610-7f1b-4a44-b944-64127591af78/mmc4.mp4)
Full article: [https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01597-0](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01597-0)
Also statistics: [https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.059/asset/19cf2dca-03c6-4926-90e3-2b4da1c4d276/main.assets/gr1_lrg.jpg](https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.cub.2025.11.059/asset/19cf2dca-03c6-4926-90e3-2b4da1c4d276/main.assets/gr1_lrg.jpg) (!)
As a species and in our arrogance, have dismissed the intelligence of other life on this planet for far too long. This is a good finding, but as a vegetarian it was obvious to me that they are at least as smart as dogs, yet people won’t really care because they are food. We really need to study the cause for a lack of empathy.
It’s also seen in plenty of birds
Gary Larson – The Far Side “cow tools”
We’d still kill them by the millions if they started talking..
I’ve found most people don’t accept the fact that we ourselves are animals and are just really good at using the environment around us. We aren’t some special chosen entity.
We are in an odd position being able to control other populations that would have probably evolved further without our existence or intervention