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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45811590
cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/45810913
Cows are not usually credited with thinking on the hoof. They eat, they chew, they stand in fields performing an activity that may look like contemplation but is generally written off as digestion.
They are not typically thought to plan, let alone solve problems. A new study suggests we may have underestimated them.
The research describes what experts claim is the first documented case of flexible, multi-purpose tool use in cattle, observed in a cow named Veronika.
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Veronika is a Swiss brown cow kept not for milk or meat but as a pet by Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker in Austria. More than a decade ago he noticed her using a long-handled brush, holding it in her mouth to scratch awkward parts of her body.
When video footage of this behaviour reached Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, it struck her as unusual, largely because Veronika used the brush in different ways to scratch different parts of her body.
“It was immediately clear that this was not accidental,” Auersperg said. “This was a meaningful example of tool use in a species that is rarely considered from a cognitive perspective.”
Auersperg and her colleague Antonio Osuna-Mascaró conducted a series of trials. They placed a long-handled brush on the ground and recorded how Veronika used it.
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When scratching broad, thick-skinned regions such as her back or rump, Veronika tended to use the bristled end, applying it with sweeping, forceful movements. When targeting softer, more sensitive areas of her lower body, she switched to using the handle to scratch herself, moving more slowly.
Because Veronika directs tools at her own body, researchers describe this as egocentric tool use, which is usually regarded as less complex than tool use aimed at external objects. Even so, flexible, multi-purpose use of a single tool is rare. Outside humans, it has previously been demonstrated convincingly only in chimpanzees, the researchers say in their paper.
They wrote in a study published in the journal Current Biology that the findings “invite a reassessment of livestock cognition”.
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The researchers suspect that Veronika’s life circumstances have played a role in the emergence of this behaviour. Most cows do not reach her age and they are rarely given the opportunity to interact with a variety of potentially useful objects.
Her long lifespan, daily contact with humans, and access to a rich physical landscape probably created favorable conditions, they said. If that is true, there may be nothing very exceptional about Veronika, other than the opportunities she has been given to exercise her brain.
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Yet another example of humans underestimating other species.
They eat, they chew, they stand in fields performing an activity that may look like contemplation but is generally written off as digestion.
Now we know what that long one with the hooks is for.
This one always impressed me, not only the understanding of how to work the locking mechanism, but cause-effect understanding of unlocking the stalls and planning ahead and executing the plan to achieve a goal.
Wow. When the cow opens her own latch thing I was thinking “eh, that might’ve been an accident, could’ve been stretching and bumped the latch”. But then she immediately repeats that with the next two stalls?! 🤯
Like you said, that cow clearly knew why she was undoing the latch, it was totally intentional. The other thing that caught my eye is that she knows multiple ways of opening that latch (blindly with her horn from the inside and with her snout from the outside). Imo that further demonstrates an understanding of what she is doing with those latches
And all that work planned just to go see for herself what’s in that basket !
Holee figgidy fuck that is impressive!
Good cow.
She’s actually laying down in her field
She’s an expert in her field, regardless
Cows are amazing. We are literally propagandized to see farm animals differently than our pets, or even wild animals. Look what they’ve gotten away with…
It’s either pet, food or pest. The last two being completely fine to murder, torture, and generally hate for some reason
Well, “don’t play with your food” is a thing
Unless you’re a cat, in which case feel free to play with your food as much as you’d like.
That looks like it feels so damn good.
Most cows do not reach her age and they are rarely given the opportunity to interact with a variety of potentially useful objects.
That’s her performance with a simple stick. Someone give that cow a typewriter. Soon we’ll have the complete works of Shakespeare or a presidential speech.
Or a Union
I can see her managing a presidential speech given how low the bar has been set recently.
This stick performance already outdoes any US presidential speech in the last year.
I just ate a hamburger. 🙈
The picture in the article of the researcher with her owner is pretty great. That’s definitely a guy who keeps a cow as a pet and is proud of her being recognized for being special (or maybe not special, but able to demonstrate capabilities of her whole species).
