A cow in Austria has been observed using tools ― the first time such behavior has been recorded in cattle. Have we underestimated the gentle bovines all this time?
Veronika first started scratching herself with sticks she found on the ground in her meadowImage: Antonio J Osuna Mascaró
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Meet Veronika.
The 13-year-old Swiss Brown cow lives in the village of Nötsch at the foot of the Carinthia mountains in southern Austria. She's kept as a pet by a local farmer, and can roam her meadow to her heart's delight.
Like many other pets, she likes to have her back scratched. If no friendly humans are around to do the job, that's not a problem ― Veronika uses a brush or stick to do it herself. She picks up objects like sticks, rakes, or brushes with her mouth and then uses them to reach and scratch various body areas.
That makes Veronika the first cow to have been observed to practice "embodied tooling" — using a tool on her own body.
What's more, when presented with a deck brush, Veronika used both sides of it to scratch herself, depending on which parts of her body she targeted.
That's considered "multi-purpose tool use" — something previously recorded only in chimpanzees in central Africa (and humans).
Auersperg said that the first time they went to see Veronika, she used tools to scratch herselfImage: Antonio J Osuna Mascaró
Is this a real cow or AI?
Auersperg, an expert in animal behavior and innovation, published a book on the topic in February 2025.
After that, she was inundated with messages from people telling her about innovative behaviors they claimed to have witnessed in their cats or pet birds.
One video in particular drew her attention. In it, a brown cow was using an old rake to scratch her back against the backdrop of a bucolic Austrian village that "looks like something out of 'Sound of Music,'" Auersperg told DW.
She and Osuna-Mascaro traveled to Veronika's home in Nötsch to make sure it was real. After all, AI is everywhere these days. Who was to say this cow was even real?
"We can never trust an anecdote just like that," Auersperg said. "You can create deepfakes, or you can have a heavily trained behavior."
So she and her colleague set out to see this tool-using cow for themselves.
Turns out Veronika is very much real. Her owner Witkar Wiegele has already kept Veronika's mother as a pet. Now it's Veronika herself who starts mooing loudly when she sees Wiegele coming.
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Cow chose different brush ends for different purposes
Auersperg and Osuna-Mascaro ate lots of apple strudel with the Wiegele family, and watched Veronika do her thing.
After a few days, Auersperg had to return to Vienna, but Osuna-Mascaro stayed in Nötsch for several weeks where he conducted 70 trials with the cow.
In it, Veronica performed multi-purpose tool use again and again with the deck brush the researcher provided.
"Veronika had a preference for the broom end of the stick instead of the handle; she was using it 2.5 times more often," Osuna-Mascaro told DW.
Veronika used that end, the one with the bristles, to scratch the rear half and upper parts of her body in long, broad strokes.
"But from time to time, she was also using the handle end of the stick," the researcher said. "At the beginning, we thought that was the result of a mistake. But she was also using the handle end in a meaningful way: She used it to scratch those body areas where her skin is soft and delicate, like the udder, the navel flap, her belly button."
When using the handle end, Veronika was also scratching differently — more of a careful poking movement.
'We just assume cows must be stupid'
Osuna-Mascaro said getting to know Veronika was an "intense experience."
"Sometimes cows behave a little bit like cats," he said. "They are not like dogs that come to you immediately. You need to gain [Veronika's] trust."
But why is this cow in rural Austria displaying behavior previously unseen, or at least not scientifically recorded, in any kinds of cattle?
For one, animal behavior researchers have not been paying very much attention to cows.
"Veronika does not belong to one of those exotic species that we would normally look for tool use in," Auersperg said. Cows are "this livestock species that's been domesticated for 10,000 years. They are everywhere around us. We just assume they must be stupid because of them being a livestock animal."
But Veronika's tool use shows humans may have underestimated cows. Auersperg and Osuna-Mascaro don't think this is a one-off case, either.
"We do not believe that Veronika is a bovine Einstein," Auersperg said.
Instead, she and her colleague suspect it's Veronika's living circumstances that facilitated her multi-purpose tool use.
"Unlike almost every cow on this planet, Veronika is not kept for [milk or meat] production, but is a beloved family pet," Auersperg said.
Her owner said it took Veronika years of practice with sticks to perfect her use of scratching tools. Most cows don't make it to 13.
"She's a pet, she's had lots of enrichment, lots of things lying around that she can pick up and interact with, and she's been given this really long life," Auersperg said.
"We have no proof whatsoever that cows are stupid animals," she added. "To have the capacity for this behavior go unobserved may have something to do with the way these animals are kept around us."
Maybe we'd observe more cows using tools if we gave them the freedom to roam and explore.
Edited by: M Agius
Of bird brains and herd mind — intelligence in the animal world
They calculate, distinguish languages and recognize themselves in the mirror. From pigeons to dolphins, we take a journey through the remarkable congitive skills of creatures far and wide.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Bird brain?
Scorned as 'rats of the air,' pigeons aren't famed for their erudition. Yet studies have shown these birdbrains can learn to read and even recognize misspelled words, pick a Monet from Picasso, and can be speedier multitaskers than humans. They may be far smaller than ours, but pigeons' brains boast six times as many nerve cells per cubic millimeter.
Image: Rahmat Gul/AP/picture alliance
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What does a fish see in the mirror?
Even fish can also recognize their reflections, but its unclear how self-aware they are. Tiny cleaner wrasses try to fight with their mirror images, then appear to test them by performing tricks like swimming upside down. Finally, they used the mirrors to scrub away marks scientists have applied to body parts they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. Perhaps they just get how mirrors work.
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Is sealife stupider?
We don’t tend to think of fish among the smartest beasts. That might have to do with the less stimulating environment under water. A recent study posited that more complex environments on land mean animals are more likely to develop to complex strategies and planning abilities to navigate them, while marine life can rely more heavily on a pre-programmed set of responses.
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Eight times the brain?
The subaquatic world isn't devoid of intelligent life though. The octopus confounds human prejudice that the smartest animals are those most like us. With a donut-shaped brain and lots of neurons in each of its eight dexterous arms, an octopus can use tools, solve complex tasks and recognize different people. Hunting in the varied terrain of reefs could be one factor in its unusual intelligence.
Dolphins, highly social, communicative and playful, have long been lauded among the wisest of beasts. They even appear to have given names, with individual animals identifying by a unique whistle. Yet some scientists claim dolphin intelligence is overrated: While the cetaceans do have large brains for their size, a lot of this bulk is just used to keep the nervous center warm.
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Clever swine
It might make meat-eaters a little uncomfortable about their sausages, but pigs outsmart dogs on some intelligence tests. They can learn commands, respond to individual names and understand complex interactions of cause and effect. Taught to operate a joystick, pigs can understand the abstract relationship between the device's movement and the cursor on the screen.
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Cats or dogs?
Dog lovers and cat lovers have long argued over which of our companions is the smartest. Dogs can distinguish between different human languages, identify multiple objects by name and cooperate with human herders in complicated tasks. But comparisons are difficult. While dogs throw themselves into human games with a gleeful will to please, cats have zero interest in intelligence tests.
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Knowing your enemy
Elephants are thought to score highly on emotional intelligence, being an unusually empathic species. Elephants in Amboseli National Park in Kenya have also been shown to differentiate the threat from different people, acting defensively or fleeing when they see, or hear the voices of, Massai men who sometimes hunt them, yet remaining calm when members of Kamba farming communities approach.
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Herd mind
Along with complex environments, sociability is thought to foster the evolution of intelligence. Like dogs, horses have lived with us for thousands of years, so it's no surprise they’ve read their human companions. Horses can tell friendly human faces from hostile ones, much as other herd animals, like goats, can judge the emotional state of members of their own species from their bleating.
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Smart — by whose standards?
If horses seem smarter than goats, perhaps that's partly because we’re more impressed by abilities that mirror our own. Studies tend to assess intelligence in human terms, says primatologist Frans de Waal: 'We humans have always based our definition of intelligence on the ability to count, for example. But for many animals, being able to count is of no use in their environment.'
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Famously, we share more than 98% of our DNA with chimps. Humans' brain-to-body weight ratio is three times that of chimps. But the real difference is in our ability to learn from one another, passing on knowledge, refining, expanding and building on ideas and creating complex, ever-evolving cultures.
