"Veronika lives with Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker who keeps the Braunvieh cow as a pet. Veronika's meadow is downright idyllic, nestled among blue lakes and snow-capped mountains and carpeted in grass green enough to make Maria von Trapp hit a whistle note. Here, Veronika nosed through the grass for twigs, which she picked up and used to scratch herself, because she was itchy."
"A new paper in Current Biology tested Veronika's stick skills with a wooden broom and found the cow could manipulate the tool for different scratching tasks. The paper is culturally noteworthy for introducing people to Veronika-who is by all accounts a wonderful cow-and scientifically noteworthy because it marks the first documented case of tool use in cows. (Cow tools, if you will.)"
"It's no surprise that many animals know how to scratch an itch. Bears are famous for it, and a quick spin on TikTok has introduced me to a rotating contraption called a cow brush that cows seem to love to scratch against. But Veronika was using a tool to scratch herself. That is, she was manipulating an object with a directed aim: to reach parts of her body that she otherwise could not."
Veronika, a Braunvieh cow in Nötsch im Gailtal in the Austrian Alps, first used a tree branch at age four to scratch an itch. She lives with organic farmer and baker Witgar Wiegele in an idyllic meadow. Veronika appears to have taught herself to use sticks for scratching and has refined the behavior by age thirteen. Researchers tested her with a wooden broom and observed that she could manipulate the tool for different scratching tasks, displaying anticipatory grip adjustments and diverse techniques. The scratching reached body parts otherwise inaccessible, constituting the first documented case of tool use in cows and expanding understanding of animal cognition.
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