How do cows scratch their back itch? An Austrian cow named Veronica has a solution that could change the way we look at farm animals.

For the past 10 years, Veronica has been observed by her owners occasionally picking up sticks with her mouth and manipulating the ends to reach hard-to-reach parts of her body. A team of animal behavior experts from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna recently watched videos of Veronica in action and noticed that her use of a stick was extraordinary.

Veronica’s innovative behavior is reported in a new study, which researchers say is the first to describe tool use in pet cows. Posted on Monday Journal “Current Biology”.

“What this tells us is that cows have the potential to innovate in the way they use tools, but we have ignored this fact for thousands of years,” lead author Antonio J. Osuna Mascaro, a postdoctoral fellow at the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine, said in an email. “There are about 1.5 billion cows in the world, and humans have lived with them for at least 10,000 years. It’s shocking that we’re only now learning this.”

The study paves the way for this trait to be observed in more cows and could provide evidence that livestock’s cognitive abilities are greater than previously thought, Osuna Mascaro said.

Veronica, a Swiss brown cow, lives on a farm in the small Austrian town of Netsch im Geiltal. It has everything a pet cow could dream of, including green pastures and plenty of neighbors to greet you as you pass by.

Osuna Mascaro said that when he first saw the video of Veronica scratching herself with a stick, it was clear that the action was intentional and not accidental.

To test the extent of the cows’ tool-use skills, the researchers conducted a series of controlled trials in which they placed deck brushes in different orientations in front of the cows. Each time Veronica used her long tongue to pick up a stick, it was recorded which end she chose and the body part she targeted when she scratched herself.

The researchers found that not only did Veronica exhibit true tool use (where the tool serves a functional purpose and can extend the limits of the subject’s own body), but she also had clear preferences for how the tool was used. The bristled side of the brush was used by Veronica to scrub the thicker skin of her upper body, while the blunt handle was used for areas of her lower body where the skin was more delicate, such as her breasts.

“This is quite surprising because, to our knowledge, the only other reliable example of the use of a multipurpose tool is Chimpanzees in the Congo Basin. “These are sometimes observed using a single tool with two different ends, where one end is used to drill into the termite mound and the other end is used to trap the termite,” Osnamascaro said. Nevertheless, it is surprising that cows have the ability to do this. ”

Although chimpanzees have the advantage of opposable thumbs, Veronica still surprised researchers with her ability to control her mouth. She readjusted her grip depending on which side of the brush she wanted to use, what part of her body she was targeting, and the range of motion she needed for that area. For the upper body, maintain a scrubbing motion, but use the end of the stick to push forward more precisely and gently.

Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was not involved in the study, agrees that Veronica’s use of the deck brush clearly indicates tool use.

“Although she didn’t manufacture (create) the brush, she clearly learned that she could use it to relieve itching and felt good doing so. She is clearly skilled with the brush, so I’m sure other cows have the bovine IQ to do it as well,” Bekov said in an email.

“Cows and other highly intelligent and emotional animals are too often dismissed as stupid and emotionless. Detailed research shows that cows are fully sentient beings with highly active brains and rich, deep emotional lives,” he added.

world famous primatologist jane goodall The discovery in 1960 that chimpanzees make and use tools forever changed the way we view chimpanzees, challenging the idea that these traits are unique to humans.

In the 1970s, avian scientist Eileen Pepperberg challenged the idea that bird brains were too small for complex cognition. She has published numerous studies on certain issues. Gray parrot They demonstrated skills similar to human infants, including vocabulary recognition and counting objects.

“Today we found out that Crow And parrots can perform some tasks at the level of apes. This would have been unimaginable a few years ago,” Osuna Mascaro said. There are many others. We still have strong biases regarding the cognitive abilities of the animals we exploit, and Veronica is here to point out where we’re wrong. ”

Veronica’s environment and rich landscape with human interaction may have provided the cows with the necessary conditions to develop this behavior. But researchers don’t believe she is the “Einstein of cows,” Osuna Mascaro said. It is likely that there are many other cows, bulls, and farm animals that have this ability but are not noticed.

Researchers plan to further study Veronica’s abilities, but are also asking anyone who has had personal experience with livestock using objects as tools to get in touch via email or social media.

“We know more about the use of exotic animal tools on remote islands than we do about the cows we live with,” says Osuna Mascaro. “But we are now starting to be sensitive enough to observe them and give them the life they deserve: opportunities for them to play, interact with objects, and discover ways to use them themselves.”

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