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Justice for Far side Cartoonist GARY LARSON: A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, a cow using a tool in a flexible manner. The ingenuity of “Veronica,” as the animal is called, shows that cattle possess enough intelligence to deal with elements of their environment and solve challenges they would not have been able to overcome otherwise.
Veronica is a pet cow in Austria. Their owners do not use them to produce meat or milk. She was not trained to do tricks. On the contrary, over the past ten years she has developed the ability to find branches in the grass, pick one out, hold it in her mouth, and scratch herself with it to relieve skin irritation.
Until now, only chimpanzees have convincingly demonstrated the ability to use tools to improve their living conditions. Recent studies also indicate Whales are the only marine animals capable of using complex tools. This European cow is about to join that exclusive group of accomplished animals.
Videos of Veronica circulating online have caught the attention of veterinary researchers in Vienna. They visited the farm, conducted behavioral tests, and conducted controlled experiments. “In repeated sessions, they verified that her decisions were consistent and functionally appropriate,” a news release said.
Veronica’s abilities go beyond simply using a point to scratch herself, explain the authors of the study published in Current biology. In the tests, the cow was shown different materials and objects, and adapted according to her needs. Sometimes she would choose soft bristles and other times she would choose firmer bristles. Researchers say she used different parts of the same tool for specific purposes, and even modified her technique depending on the type of object or area of her body she wanted to scratch.
Although they consider using a tool to relieve irritation “less complicated” compared to, for example, using a sharp rock to reach the seeds, specialists greatly appreciate Veronica’s ability. For now, she explains, she can decide which part of the tool is most useful to her. The results suggest that we have underestimated the cognitive ability of livestock, according to the authors.
Why is Veronica so skilled?
The team acknowledges that it is still too early to say that all cows can use tools with the same skill as Veronica. Currently, researchers are trying to determine how this cow developed awareness of its surroundings.
Researchers believe her own circumstances played a role. Veronica lived for 10 years in a complex, open environment full of objects to manipulate, a very different experience from raising livestock for milk and meat. These conditions, they say, fostered exploratory and innovative behavior. They are now looking for more videos of livestock using tools to gather more evidence about their cognitive abilities.
“Until now, tool use has been considered a select club, almost exclusively for primates (especially great apes, but also macaques and capuchins), some birds such as crows and parrots, and marine mammals such as dolphins. Finding it in a cow is a remarkable example of convergent evolution: intelligence arises in response to similar problems, no matter how different the animal’s design may be,” said Mikel Llorente, director of the Department of Psychology. at the University of Girona, who did not participate in the study, in a statement to the Scientific Media Center in Spain.