"The 13-year-old Swiss Brown cow lives in the village of Notsch 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."
"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). Alice Auersperg and Antonio Osuna-Mascaro from the University of Veterinarian Medicine in Vienna recorded and analyzed Veronika's behavior. They published their findings in a new study in the journal Current Biology on January 19, 2026."
A 13-year-old Swiss Brown cow named Veronika lives as a pet in Notsch and freely roams her meadow. Veronika uses brushes or sticks to scratch parts of her body when humans are not available, constituting the first documented case of a cow practicing embodied tooling. When given a deck brush, Veronika used both sides to target different body areas, qualifying as multi-purpose tool use previously observed only in chimpanzees and humans. Video evidence prompted verification because of concerns about deepfakes, and field observation and analysis confirmed the behavior.
Read at www.dw.com
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