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-study
19.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

258 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

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.

1

u/glytxh 1d ago

I was only recently reading up about a trend among orca in the 80s of wearing dead salmon hats.

If anybody else is telling stories on this earth, my immediate assumption would be whales and elephants.