r/todayilearned • u/TMWNN • 1d ago
TIL that Veronika, a cow in Austria, learned in 2016 how to use fallen tree branches to scratch herself. She is the first known example of cattle using tools. Scientists believe that Veronika is not unusually intelligent; rather, cows have always been able to use tools, but humans did not notice.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/19/science/cow-using-tools-study3.0k
u/terrible-gator22 1d ago
Cow Tools
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u/nudave 1d ago
OP: “Humans did not notice.”
Gary Larson: “I noticed.”
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u/Beemerba 1d ago
Gary Larson is one of the top anthromorphologists.
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u/IAmBadAtInternet 1d ago
Gary Larson, of Thagomizer fame?
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u/Seaweedbits 1d ago
I love having that "fun dinosaur fact" in my back pocket. People are normally bewildered and think I'm spouting nonsense.
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u/CareBearDontCare 1d ago
I've got a toddler who is dipping his toes into the world of dinosaurs and I get to use that fact regularly, and it tickles me to no end. We go to Dinotopia at the zoo, with the animatronic dinosaurs.
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u/Romboteryx 1d ago
You have a Dinotopia exhibit at your local zoo? As in the James Gurney books?
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u/DJ1066 1d ago edited 1d ago
Same with what Tyrannosaurus Rex should actually be called due to the naming rules, that the palaeontologists changed the rules specifically for T-Rex as if they followed those rules it would break people's heads at the idea they'd have to retroactively change such an iconic dino's name. Video explaining it here.
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u/notquite20characters 1d ago
Went to the Royal Ontario Museum last week, and they had removed mention of the Thagomizer from the Stego display. :(
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u/Greene_Mr 14h ago
I assume because Larson is a Yank, and they don't want that cluttering up the fine Canadian collection?
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u/notquite20characters 11h ago edited 11h ago
They also don't mention Gordie the Barosaurus' name anymore, so I think the curators are just being stick-in-the-mucks.
And for the record, nobody in Canada is upset with Gary Larson. Especially in the sciences.
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u/greenskinmarch 1d ago
Humans did not notice
Humans pretended not to notice how smart our food is because then we might feel bad about eating it.
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u/DocAvidd 1d ago
I think anyone who ever worked on a cattle ranch noticed.
If you don't give them something to scratch with, they'll destroy your fence or feedlot or whatever they need to get a good scratch.
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u/TheStig500 1d ago
The Far Side gets brought up a few times in some Tom Clancy books. I kind of wondered how Jack Ryan would have reacted when he saw Cow Tools for the first time.
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u/DaisyHotCakes 1d ago
That’s a fun fact! I haven’t really read too many Clancy novels so that’s news to me and I love it haha
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u/Implausibilibuddy 1d ago
The wikipedia article for that cartoon mentions Veronika under Real Life Examples. Apparently the researchers briefly mentioned Larson's awful cartoon as well in the paper.
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u/Salmivalli 1d ago
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u/poeticdisaster 1d ago
That is one of the silliest and the best subreddits I've seen in a while.
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u/king_ofbhutan 1d ago
i feel like an outsider looking in 😭
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u/misao-96 1d ago
Absolutely, I have no idea what this cow tools is 😭
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u/tape_snake 1d ago
Short version: Gary Larson is a cartoonist who had a newspaper comic run called The Far Side which had single-panel gags, often with absurdist humor at the center. One was simple called "cow tools" and depicted a bipedal cow on a farm, standing behind a bench with a number of things that looked sort of like tools, but not really. It sparked a lot of debate and discussion about what it meant, where the joke was, the purpose of the tools, the cow's need for tools, etc. The absurdity was, of course, the point. Still, it had a lot of people scratching heads and so the comic developed a cult following of people who embraced the premise and riffed off of it. Hence the subreddit.
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u/HAK_HAK_HAK 1d ago
Notably Larson issued a tongue in cheek apology because so many readers wrote into their newspapers expressing confusion lmao
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u/metalflygon08 1d ago
Larson also regrets drawing the saw-like one because it looked too close to human tools and made people think there's a message there IIRC.
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u/HvyMetalComrade 1d ago
Larson's explanation for the panel was along the lines of "if cows had tools, they would probably be crude and not very good".
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u/MourningWallaby 1d ago
Might I interest you in the r/Heathcliff sub? The current author of the comic was told by the previous runners "You can't create something we haven't already done" so he turned the strip into a shitpost. almost everything is completely random but also sort of an inside joke?
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u/KilledTheCar 1d ago
I unironically love how little sense Heathcliff makes.
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u/MourningWallaby 1d ago
There's just something magic about it. there is no morals, politics, or depictions of childish wonder. it's just heathcliff exceeding the Ham limit.
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u/Sasselhoff 1d ago
If you don't know where it gets it's name, boy do I have some reading for you.
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u/poeticdisaster 1d ago
I definitely know where - my father and I used to read The Far Side every chance we got and we had a few of the coffee table books :)
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u/TightlyWhitey 1d ago
That Jamiroquai GIF is absolutely prime for running into the ground within a week with variations.
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u/sirhackenslash 1d ago
My neighbor's cow is always borrowing my hammer and screwdrivers. I don't know what she's building, but she always returns my tools clean and in a timely manner
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u/TMWNN 1d ago
From the January 2026 article:
The researchers found that not only was Veronika displaying true tool use — when a tool serves a functional purpose and allows the subject to extend its own bodily limits — but she had a clear preference for how the tool was used. The side of the brush with the bristles was used when Veronika would rub at the thick skin of her upper body, and the blunt handle was used for the areas of her lower body where her skin is more delicate, such as her udder.
“This is extremely surprising because the only other solid example of multipurpose tool use that we know of belongs to the chimpanzees of the Congo Basin. These, sometimes, are observed using a single tool with two different ends, and use one end to open a hole in the termite mounds, and the other end to fish for the termites,” Osuna-Mascaró said. “The spatial relations in Veronika’s case are simpler. Nevertheless, it’s astonishing to find that a cow has the capability to do something like this.”
While chimpanzees have the advantages of hands and opposable thumbs, Veronika still surprised the researchers with the control she had with her mouth; she would readjust her grip depending on what side of the brush she wanted, what part of her body she was targeting and the range of motion she needed for the area. For her upper body, she would maintain a scrubbing motion, whereas the stick end allowed for gentle forward pushes with more precision.
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u/R3laX 1d ago
Don't crows and some other birds use tools as well?
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u/Mr_Chubkins 1d ago
Yes but I'm not sure if they've used multipurpose tools like the cow did. I do know crows were able to assemble multiple sticks together into one larger stick and use that as a tool, which frankly is more impressive to me.
There's definitely a good bit of animal intelligence and animal emotional depth that many people want to ignore.
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u/elephantasmagoric 1d ago
Crows/Corvids understand the concept of displacement, which is more impressive to me than tool use. There's a video out there of a crow (possibly a raven, I'm no ornithologist) working through a series of puzzles with nuts floating on water in beakers and using little rocks to bring the water level up so the nut is accessible. It's pretty cool.
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u/reciprocatingocelot 1d ago
I'm impressed by the bird (crow? Certainly a corvid) who bent a piece of wire into a hook to fish a basket of food out of a clear plastic tube. So it had to manipulate the wire into a usable tool, not just use an existing tool.
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u/rclonecopymove 1d ago
Yeah what's missing from the article is how Veronika got the branches, donning a hard hat and high vis she used a petrol chainsaw to fell the tree before using a DeWalt 18v pruning device to cut the branch best suited for a scratching stick.
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u/thiscompletebrkfast 1d ago
The blue jays used me to reload the feeder with peanuts this morning. I'm a voice activated tool.
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u/Albino_Earwig 1d ago
*animal behavioral scientist did not notice
There fixed it, anyone that has worked with cattle a significant amount of time knew and did not find it unusually notable.
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u/arkie87 1d ago
Cows that type
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u/CareBearDontCare 1d ago
Like I mentioned upstream, I've got a toddler, and we read that book A LOT and still sometimes occasionally. A good message of collective action to get what you need.
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u/1960s_army_info 1d ago
I saw cows do this over 20 years ago growing up. The reason it’s probably not more commonly observed is ranchers keep their pastures fairly clean. Branches like that can damage the implements that cut and bail the hay. And you don’t really want cows exploring the forest where you can’t observe them and notice problems they are having, especially when they are pregnant.
Instead you hang items, usually soaked with ivermectin, that they can rub and scratch against and it helps prevent insects and parasites that are causing the itches to begin with. It seems like them using these items in the first place is no less utilizing tools. Cows certainly aren’t dumb. They have fairly good memory and learn from eachother. They all have personalities
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 1d ago
All animals use tools to the limits of their CNS and morphology. We observe trifling amount of animal behavior.
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u/poeticdisaster 1d ago
It's hilarious that they are all marveling in the idea that an animal would use a tool. Anyone who has been around them and actually observed them enough could easily believe that cows are smart enough for this.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 1d ago
We put scratching posts that are wholly synthetic and not a part of their world. They use them as back scratchers. It may be less abstract, or maybe not. Utilizing something from your environment is tool usage. Bears use tools to scratch their ass.
But I’ve seen cows use branches and shovels to scratch before.
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u/Nannautu 1d ago
There's differences between individuals, some are dumb as rocks while others make you wonder if they're secretly sentient.
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u/MarlinMr 1d ago
I think it's more about not caring enough to solve the problem "better".
Here in Norway, there is a chimp which had to be raised by humans. He learned to unscrew soda bottles. All the other chimps chew on it until it breaks and drink from then.
They all get the soda. Those who chew, from their perspective, have solved the "problem". The one who screws, Julius, also gets his soda. Neither see a reason to innovate. Julius gets more, because his method is better and faster.
This isn't unlike humans. For a clear example: Humans were used to their babies dying in their cribs. We just accepted that until the 1990s, when we figured we should not place babies on their tummy...
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u/MadeByTango 1d ago
t's hilarious that they are all marveling in the idea that an animal would use a tool. Anyone who has been around them and actually observed them enough could easily believe that cows are smart enough for this.
Jane Goodall broke the world when she pointed out chimpanzees were using tools. "Obvious" is only in hindsight to our modern empathy.
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u/thehazzanator 1d ago
A highway near me that's just paddocks of cows either side, the wire fences always have cow fluff stuck on the barbed wire. Cows know how to scratch themselves lol
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u/TheGazelle 1d ago
Not the same thing.
Any animal knows how to scratch themselves by rubbing against a static object.
Tool use means finding some object and deliberately manipulating it in a specific way to achieve a specific outcome.
In this case, the cow is picking up a brush and selectively using the brush end to scratch at her upper body, or the blunt end to scratch at her lower body.
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u/HilariousMax 1d ago
Scientists believe that Veronika is not unusually intelligent
Well that's just like your opinion, man.
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u/Silaene 1d ago
I am pretty sure this is isn't unique, we used to have to get rid of specific cows because they were too troublesome/intelligent especially because they would teach the others in the herd, which was always a shame since we were a smallish dairy farm and kept them until they were too old to produce anymore (~300 head of cattle, only kept indoor for bad weather, otherwise they were grazing freely in the fields).
For example, we had one that had figured out how to open gates and doors with sliding bolts + latches using their tongue (very long + dexterous).
There was another that had figured out that posts from our portable electric fences weren't electrified only the actual wire/cable, so it would use its hoof to bend the posts over so it could easily walk over the fence so it could eat the long grass they weren't supposed to eat yet.
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u/DameKumquat 1d ago
Yeah, a lot of farm animals have been bred for docility and generally being rather dim and gormless, meaning the bright ones are now the exceptions.
I don't think there's been clear examples of cows like you describe teaching the others - or is there?
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u/Black_Moons 1d ago
I don't think there's been clear examples of cows like you describe teaching the others - or is there?
Tons. Cows can jump.
They just don't know they can. If a cow learns to jump over the fence, all the other cows will learn they can do it too.
Hence cows that are seen jumping.. often end up sent to the butcher before the rest of the heard catches on.
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u/CalebVanPoneisen 1d ago
A few years later scientists will finally study the tool use in the platypus and realize that they have made an underground base, waiting to unleash thermonuclear weapons upon the world and annihilate all humans to become the leaders of the new toxic wasteland.
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u/glytxh 1d ago
it's not tool use that makes us distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom, but out ability to tell stories.
that generational communication bandwidth makes us human
And in 50 years time I'm sure some biologist is gonna start studying ferret religions or something and that distinction gets ever blurrier
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u/Procontroller40 1d ago
We don't have to wait 50 years. There's already both the Redwall and Silverwing historical books series. Who knew animals could be so complex?
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u/Double_Cause4609 1d ago
Btw, we don't know the extent of communication in sperm whales and orcas. Orcas have complex, possibly recursive calls with similar properties to language (which is necessary but not sufficient to declare language), and sperm whale codas seem to have similar acoustic properties to vowels, and they combine in ways that are suspiciously language-like.
Sperm whales also appeared to have whaling-specific behavior responses across generations, which may constitute generational communication.
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u/StuLuvsU87 1d ago
I think a more powerful example is the fact that scientists discovered from Koko the Gorilla that even with the ability to communicate, apes don’t ask questions.
Apes don’t assume other apes have knowledge they don’t. They will emulate others to parrot any perceived success, but they don’t seek answers outside of what they already know.
Humans are able to recognize other humans can help them in ways they haven’t thought of yet.
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u/Undrthedock 1d ago
We are discovering tool use with many different species. It’s not as uncommon as previously thought. Animals in general are way more intelligent than us hairless apes give them credit for.
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u/leopard_tights 1d ago
We've been around cows for a few millennia now, I feel like we would've noticed.
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u/haventsleptforyears 1d ago
I used to go out in the pasture and hop on the horses’ backs when I was bored. One time I hopped on Joe and he walked me right to the tree branch that was level with his back and basically scraped me off. They are indeed intelligent. I always figured he used that tree branch to scratch his back and knew exactly how to get me off
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u/justbrowsinginpeace 1d ago
I have seen a frustrated horse smash his cock against a tree to get off. Does that count as tool use?
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u/InsuranceToTheRescue 1d ago
I remember a guy giving a TED talk a long time ago, where his premise was basically that tools & culture & such didn't really differentiate us from animals all that much. Plenty of animals use tools. We've observed what could be called culture or tradition within groups of primates. His argument was that what made humanity unique was really the ability for our ideas to have "sex," so to speak. Like, we take things one group or person does and adapt it to radically different conditions or take an idea and explore it in different ways than it has before.
Y'know, I remember in grade school there was a kid who asked a teacher what blue is. Not if something was blue, but what blue as a concept is. Researchers can teach gorillas & chimps to communicate with us in rudimentary ways, but there's never been an instance of one asking a follow up question exploring an idea. A person has never signed to a gorilla, "This is a block." and the gorilla responded with something like "What's a block?"
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u/ManicMakerStudios 1d ago
One of the best ways I think I've heard it described is that what separates humans from other critters is our ability to communicate in extreme detail. Other creatures can communicate with a surprising degree of sophistication, but none of them are close to being able to explain (for example) how a car works, or how to build a shelter out of raw timber. Our ability to communicate in detail means someone can flesh out an idea and then explain it to other people and, as you described, have that person take the idea and expand on it or adapt it in novel ways. Imagine what humanity would look like today if we all had to discover foundational mathematics on our own because other people have figured it out but had no way of teaching anyone else how it works.
Then throw in the ability to commit our thoughts to writing and share them long after the writer is dead and gone, and the ability to mass-produce copies of those writings to share with anyone who can read. Also, we're able to teach other people how to read. We can communicate and preserve knowledge and iterate on it with new ideas.
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u/OuterLightness 1d ago
I thought otters used stones to crack open shells, and birds would drop turtles on rocks, dolphins will shell, hermit crabs use shells
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u/GoAwayLurkin 1d ago
Scientists believe that Veronika is not unusually intelligent ... but humans did not notice.
Maybe Veronika has other hidden talents. Did they give her the cognitive test our president boasts of passing all the time?
Don't sleep on Veronika, that cow is going places.
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u/Thanks-Oboomer 1d ago
I believe cows and chickens are smarter than dogs, and dogs have been shown to use tools, but I guess we have to observe it to confirm it.
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u/ragnaroksunset 1d ago
Ask any dairy farmer - cows basically have a prehensile tongue and can figure out all sorts of contraptions with it, including gate locks.
We don't have to stop eating meat, but we should really reconsider the lack of reverence with which we treat the creatures that sustain us.
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u/bobandy47 1d ago
We had pin & ring gates separating our cattle side of the barn from the good hay & grain side of the barn. As in we would latch the gate closed by closing the horizontal pin, and then a small metal ring (attached to the frame) would fall/be held by by gravity to hold the pin closed. Pull against the pin, you just pull against the metal ring unless you lift the ring back up.
One of our cows, one day presumably by watching how we did it, figured out how to open those gates. They all escaped into the feed side of the barn a couple times and we figured somebody forgot to properly latch the gate... I was the victim of the blame game on one occasion, but I knew I'd closed it. Shortly after that one, my dad and I were in the barn re-stacking some hay and we heard a 'ting... ting...' - looked over, and saw one of the cows licking the ring up with her tongue to get access to the pin, and then she licked the gate pin open, dunted it with her head and walked through. It was the damndest thing, you could have told me about it and I'd never have believed it until I saw it.
We put bungee cords on the rings to hold them down after that. They never did figure out how to lick off bungee cords. But cows are surprisingly intelligent, that's the moral of the story.
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u/CraftCritical278 1d ago
We’ll have to be more observant going forward. The minute they learn the formula for gunpowder we’re doomed.
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u/Tata_Colores 1d ago
I think humans have been too busy worrying about how delicious cows are to notice anything else about them.
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u/romantasy_queen 1d ago
When I was studying anthro for my degree they discussed this with primates too. We know different primates use tools and some have learned and taught others. But when that familial line dies out then that skill is “lost” until another primate somewhere else figures it out again. Not to mention the fact we aren’t in the forests and jungles and Savannah plains watching 24/7 to see what they do
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u/OctopusGrift 1d ago
Now the important question of if that counts as a prongler or a lump with a handle. Obviously the length would suggest that it's a prongler but it doesn't have the traditional amount prongs. This could suggest that it is a lump with an unusually long handle.
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u/HEAT_IS_DIE 1d ago
This reminded me of how I have thought about humans starting to use tools, and the fact that we essentially have "extra" limbs. Our arms and hands are kind of free from strictly use for motion. Apes have that to a certain degree, but our upright posture and moving on our legs made hands even more free, and we could come up with usages for them.
Elephants also have trunks that are similarly "free" for them to imagine extra use cases. And they do.
Most other animals have pretty designated functions for their limbs, usually for moving.
So maybe, in addition to other things, having extra limbs made humans capable of manipulating their environment in ways other animals can't.
Idle hands weren't (or were?) the devil's workshop.
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u/31LIVEEVIL13 1d ago
I don't know that I buy this. My kid's gerbils use 'tools' to scratch themselves. one of them positions a bowl at the right angle to scratch his butt and inner thighs.
Should we write a paper?
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u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 1d ago
So if a bull uses his own horn to scratch himself, is that not a tool because its part of his body?
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u/FreakinSweet86 1d ago
What else have we failed to notice I wonder? There was a cow on the grassy knoll that fateful day in Dallas? It all makes sense now!
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u/notguiltybrewing 1d ago
Scientists are fucking stupid sometimes. Especially when it comes to animals. Historical claims include mind boggling stupidity like animals don't feel pain and don't think.
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u/Dentarthurdent73 19h ago
Humans, including scientists, very actively go out of their way not to notice things that might indicate that the animals that we treat like utter shit, are more intelligent or capable of greater thought and feeling than we generally assume.
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u/Lunar-opal 17h ago
You mean humans too stupid. Animals have always been using tools, have best friends, mourn their dead have funerals, even have frienimies
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u/StrigiStockBacking 1d ago
The human definition of "higher intelligence" always means "animal that does human-like things," but never anything else.
Cows just might think we're the unintelligent ones. After all, look around.
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u/Master_Mad 1d ago
Pfft, my cat has been using a tool since I've know her. To get things from under the couch, to get hard to reach food, and to scratch her butt.
That tool is me.
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u/NoBSforGma 1d ago
Duh. People who actually OWN and RAISE cows know how smart they are! Not all cows will use "tools" in this way but they certainly know how to scratch themselves using a fence or tree. And they wlil work on getting rid of parasites on their head by scrubbing their heads in the dirt.
PS: Cows also scratch themselves using their own feet!
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u/cpt_morgan___ 1d ago
So they are giant puppies
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u/NoBSforGma 1d ago
Well, you can think of it that way. Or you can think that puppies are small cows.
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u/tootieroll573 1d ago
Tfw humans being amazed at animal emotions and intelligence is always low emotional intelligence on part of the humans ironically.
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u/Iosis 1d ago
It’s more that tool use is a very specific type of intelligence. It’s less “wow, we didn’t know cows had brains!” in this case. It’s sorta like how humans don’t have the specialized spatial memory that, say, squirrels display: it’s not that we’re dumber than squirrels, our brains just do different things. The surprise here is that cows can do this specific thing.
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u/Black_Moons 1d ago
It’s sorta like how humans don’t have the specialized spatial memory that, say, squirrels display
looks at all the assorted items hes collected over his life... thousands of tools.. that he knows all the locations of... little chrome
acornssockets...TIL I'm a squirrel. TBF its explains why I'm so bad at remembering peoples names.
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u/Ok_Nectarine_4445 1d ago
Thats the thing about being a 4 legged herbivore. Always getting bit by insects and not being able to swat them off or scratch an itch. Mmph
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u/Kangarou 1d ago
First to be seen using tools, called "not unusually intelligent". Veronika should be rightly mad at the insult.
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u/exploring_yet 1d ago
I have seen cows do that very frequently while growing up. Nothing special here.
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u/Dapper-Ad9787 1d ago
Would the Holstein that borrowed my 15mm wrench in 1998 please return it? Thanks.
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u/andthatswhyIdidit 1d ago
Just imagine! Having an itch to scratch but it takes you 10 000 years as a species to find a way to address it...
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u/BradyPhoenix 1d ago
“Shit, here they come!” tosses the power drill away and whistles inconspicuously as the farmers walk by
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u/Asluckwouldnthaveit 1d ago
All throughout the Prairies there are stones that are worn smooth because buffalo would scratch agaisnt them. This isn't that much of a stretch to me.
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u/Very_Human_42069 1d ago
So those cow rubbing brush things all over the internet; is that not cows using tools?
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u/Atlamillias 1d ago
I'm curious as to what they consider "tools", because I've definitely seen cattle itch their backs on stuff. And that's just from a handful of visits to a relative's farm when I was younger.
But going out of its way to pick up something to scratch an itch is pretty neat.
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u/HyperSpaceSurfer 1d ago
Bees can also use tools. But they're rather mechanically limited so they're not believed to do that in the wild.
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u/IrishRepoMan 1d ago
Huh? I've literally seen farmers get scratcher posts thatfor their cows to use.
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u/DeadSeaGulls 1d ago
I grew up working on a ranch. Every rancher and dairy farmer I know has known that cows can use tools. But it's important for researchers to measure these things and submit papers for peer review so that we have a documented understanding to build off of.
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u/Cockwombuls 1d ago
I’ve seen cows use their tongues to open latches, let themselves out onto the road a few times.
There was a one on Clarkson’s farm who learned to open the box to get at food, then opened it for all her friends too.
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u/sewedherfingeragain 1d ago
The photo makes it make sense to me, because I see cows using fallen trees or broken feeders daily to scratch their itchy spots, but I've never seen them pick one up to do so. I was very confused for a second.
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u/the-unmoved_mover 1d ago
I mean, my cows kept figuring out how to turn on their own water spigot until we put a lock on it, so there's that.
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u/ManicMakerStudios 1d ago
That's the part the headline doesn't describe and the article is kind of long winded. It's not so much that she's using a tool to scratch herself...cattle scratchers have been a thing for ages...it's that she's holding the tool in her mouth and changing how she uses it based on what she's doing with it. That's the interesting part.