Meet Veronika, the tool-using cow
Summary
Ars Technica covers Veronika, a Swiss brown cow in Austria, using sticks and a brush-like deck scrub broom to scratch herself, a behavior studied in a Current Biology paper. The researchers demonstrate goal-directed, context-sensitive tool use in a livestock animal, highlighting that cow cognition may be underestimated and drawing connections to prior animal-tool-use research across species.