Stupid cow? Not so fast: some can use a backscratcher
Austrian cow Veronika grabs a brush with her long, strong fibrous tongue and scratches herself for a while.
This highly unusual behavior attracted the attention of some biologists in Austria; These biologists say they have scientifically proven for the first time that domestic cattle can use tools in a targeted manner.
In Veronika’s case, she puts long objects in her mouth and uses them to scratch various parts of her body, even her butt.
In their study published Monday in the journal Current Biology, Alice Auersperg and Antonio Osuna Mascaro of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna wrote that the cognitive abilities of farm animals are often underestimated.
After Auersperg published his book The Creative Spirit of Animals about a year ago, many people told him about animals with special behaviors.
Among other things, he received a video of Veronika, the pet of an organic farmer and baker living in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia.
Auersperg and Osuna Mascaro discovered that Veronika had been collecting fallen branches or rakes to scratch herself for about nine years.
For her experiments, Veronika was presented with a long-handled brush in different positions dozens of times.
It turned out that Veronika deliberately took the tip of the handle into her mouth in order to tilt her head to the side and back and thus reach the back with the brush.
If she wanted to reach more sensitive areas, such as her navel or anus, she took the brush at the other end and carefully scratched herself with the tip of its handle.
Osuna Mascaro said “Veronika is no Einstein among nerds”; He was fortunate to grow up as a pet in a stimulating environment.
Osuna Mascaro and Auersperg believe that all cows can develop such skills if they are allowed to interact and play with objects as young animals.
Researchers now want to find out what factors encourage this behavior. They also hope that people who have observed other cows or livestock with tool-using skills will contact them.
“We suspect that this ability is more widespread than has been documented so far,” Osuna Mascaro said.
