Justice for Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson: A team of scientists has seen, for the first time, a cow using a tool in a flexible way. The intelligence of “Veronika,” as the animal is called, shows that cows are smart enough to control the characteristics of their environment and solve challenges that they would not be able to overcome.
Veronika is a domesticated cow in Austria. Its owners do not use it for meat or milk production. And he was not trained to do tricks; rather, over the past 10 years he has developed the ability to find twigs in the grass, pick one, hold it in his mouth, and scratch it to relieve skin irritation.
Until now, only chimpanzees had convincingly demonstrated the ability to use tools to improve their living conditions. Recent research also reveals that whales are the only marine animals capable of using sophisticated tools. This European cow is about to join that group of intelligent animals.
Videos of Veronika circulating on the Internet have attracted the attention of animal researchers in Vienna. They visit the farm, do behavioral tests, and do controlled experiments. “On repeated occasions, they confirmed that his decisions were consistent and appropriate,” the press release said.
Veronika’s skills go beyond using a point to scratch herself, explain the authors of the study published in Current Biology. In the tests, the cow was given different textures and materials, and it adapted according to its needs. Sometimes he chose soft bristles and sometimes a hard point. The researchers said that he used different parts of the same tool for specific purposes and even changed his method according to the type of thing or the area of his body he wanted to scratch.
Although they consider using a tool to eliminate irritation “less complicated” compared to, for example, using a sharp rock to get seeds, experts highly appreciate Veronika’s skill. In the meantime, he shows that he can decide which part of the tool is most useful to him. The findings suggest that we shouldn’t underestimate the cognitive abilities of cows, according to the authors.
Why is Veronika So Talented?
The team agrees that it is too early for cows to use tools with Veronika’s capabilities. Currently, researchers are trying to figure out how this cow was able to recognize its surroundings.
Researchers believe that his particular circumstances played a role. Veronika has lived for 10 years in a complex, open environment full of controllable things—a very different experience from that of cows raised for dairy and meat production. These conditions encouraged experimental and innovative behavior, they said. Now they are looking for more videos of cows using the tools to gather more evidence about their cognitive abilities.
“Until now, the use of tools has been considered a select group, almost especially in chimpanzees (mainly great apes, but also macaques and capuchins), other birds such as corvids and parrots, and marine mammals such as dolphins. It may be,” said Miquel Llorente, director of the Department of Psychology at the University of Girona, who was not involved in this study, in a statement to Science Media Center Spain.
