07/20/2026
Veronika is a 13-year-old Swiss Brown cow who lives in the village of Nötsch im Gailtal in Carinthia, Austria. She is a pet, not raised for meat or milk, and she belongs to a local baker named Witgar Wiegele.
About a decade ago, Wiegele noticed something odd. His cow was picking up sticks and using them to scratch herself.
Over the years she got better at it. She moved from small sticks to full-sized objects, working a broom or a deck brush with her prehensile tongue and mouth. She adjusts its length, its angle, and her grip.
And she didn't just wave it around. She uses the bristled end on the broad, tough-skinned parts of her body, like her back and her thigh. Then she flips the brush to the smooth handle for the sensitive spots, her belly button and her udder.
Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna took it seriously. Postdoctoral researcher Antonio Osuna-Mascaró ran 70 controlled trials over two weeks, setting a deck brush in front of Veronika at different angles. In nearly every one, she used it as a tool.
Their findings, published in the journal Current Biology on January 19, 2026, mark the first documented case of tool use in cattle. Using one tool flexibly for different jobs like this had previously been confirmed only in chimpanzees and humans.
The team even nodded to Gary Larson's 1982 Far Side cartoon "Cow Tools," a joke built entirely on the premise that cows are too dim to use tools.
Cognitive biologist Alice Auersperg, who worked on the study, said it best. "When I saw the footage, it was immediately clear that this was not accidental."
