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 “som...
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