Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use.
Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker from a small town in Carinthia near the Italian border, keeps Veronika as a pet and noticed that she occasionally played with sticks and used them to scratch her body.
Word soon got around and before long a video clip of the cow’s behaviour reached biologists in Vienna who specialise in animal intelligence. They immediately grasped the importance of the footage. “It was a cow using an actual tool,” said Dr Antonio Osuna Mascaró at the city’s University of Veterinary Medicine. “We got everything ready and jumped in the car to visit.”
Veronika is far from making even misshapen tools, but her prowess in using them has impressed nonetheless. Over seven sessions of 10 trials, the researchers witnessed 76 instances of tool use as she grabbed the broom to scratch otherwise unreachable regions. Using both ends of the brush counts as multi-purpose tool use, the scientists say, which is extraordinarily rare. Beyond humans, it has only been shown convincingly in chimpanzees.
59 Comments
einkorn@feddit.org · 72 pts · 211d
Hasn't it been known for quite some time already that pigs and cows roughly have the cognitive capacity of a three-year-old?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 21 pts · 211d
Yeah...there is nothing new here that any farmer couldn't tell you.
mika_mika@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 210d
That's still really fucking dumb.
athatet@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 210d
You don’t know very many three year olds, do you?
LumiNocta@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 210d
Well... plenty of adult humans barely achieve the intelligence of a 3 year old. Also intelligence is not just smart or dumb, it's the ability to learn and apply new knowledge. Which this cow is showing off, because we didn't know they could understand the concept of a tool, like you for example.
perestroika@slrpnk.net · 50 pts · 211d
Just came from watching the video and intended to post this. :) Truly impressive.
And likely possible due to the environment she lives in - very different from that of dairy cows. They don't live that long and don't have chances of exploring the world.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 49 pts · 211d
We lose so much by treating animals like they're nothing but food for humans.
hesh@quokk.au · 33 pts · 211d
"Cow Tools" was real all along
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 211d
From the article ...
SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 211d
Today is cows with sticks, tomorrow Cows With Guns
nevetsg@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 210d
Veronika hid in the forest, Read books with great zeal
She loved Che Guevera, A revolutionary veal
bluesheep@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 210d
Rise of the planet of the cows
hakunawazo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 210d
Flock assemble.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 210d
Slaughter House: Cows Revenge.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 210d
Take my money, I want to watch that
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 210d
Featuring
Tom Moos and Charlize Udders
shaman1093@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 210d
What's next? Chickens in choppers?
SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 210d
sukhmel@programming.dev · 1 pts · 210d
Wrong country
AmidFuror@fedia.io · 12 pts · 211d
Chickens are going to have to up their game.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 211d
Veronika is gorgeous!
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 211d
She is, and I bet she's fun to be around too.
avidamoeba@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 211d
We used to have a couple of cows when I was a kid. Shoveling their shit was hard but they'd always let you give them a hug and lick your hand. Lived a long life and gave us a lot.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 211d
My grandparents had a typical crop farm with a few chickens and one hog/one steer per year (to slaughter in fall for meat), and a milk cow. I used to love visiting them and watching grandpa give the cats a few shots of milk.
Good times back then.
victorz@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 211d
She got a sister? Can I get a number?
anon_8675309@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 210d
Scientists: You see, what separates man from animal is tool use.
Animals: okay watch this…
architect@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 210d
The mammal brain acts like a mammal? No…
ghost@literature.cafe · -5 pts · 210d
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · -33 pts · 211d
INCOMING! THE VEGANS ARE INCOMING!
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 28 pts · 211d
Respecting animals doesn't mean you have to become vegan. It does mean tha we shouldn't be housing them in massive barns and killing them by the millions.
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org · 21 pts · 211d
Any other case where you cause unnecessary harm to someone while "respecting" them? And if so, then what's that respect worth?
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 211d
Unnecessary harm means housing hundreds or thousands of animals and birds in massive barns without access to the outside environment. It's no different than having pets, where you care for them, feed them and take them for walks. It doesn't mean you can never kill them for food if needed.
That's what respect means.
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org · 22 pts · 211d
That's the point, we don't need to kill them for food, which makes it unnecesary harm.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 211d
I disagree but to each their own.
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org · 14 pts · 211d
How do you "disagree"? We can disagree with opinions but weather or not humans need to eat animals to be healthy is a fact.
commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -3 pts · 211d
you don't know what anyone else needs
DarthFrodo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 210d
Are the hundreds of millions of people who live without eating animals secretly reptiloid, or how do you make sense of that?
victorz@lemmy.world · -10 pts · 211d
We don't need to kill plants for food either.
RalfWausE@feddit.org · 1 pts · 211d
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org · 5 pts · 211d
In that case you are either on the defending side, in which case the harm is not unnecessary or you are on the attacking side, which I can see no respect in.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 210d
Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org · 3 pts · 210d
I can't read this as anything but solipsism or maybe good old-fashioned intellectual dishonesty. We know that animals are capable of pain and suffering and we know that plants lack the prerequisites like a nervous system, as well as any evolutionary benefit of pain, because they cannot remove themselves from danger.
The position that causing pain or not causing pain is equal is just morally bankrupt.
Oh and even if killing an animal vs. killing a plant was morally analogous, it would still be better to eat the plants directly, since many more plants are harvested to raise a single animal than it would take to feed a human.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 209d
tar@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 210d
cows mostly graze, but they're also fed things like corncobs and stalks. people can't eat those.
starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 210d
I really don't understand the argument of saying plants are sentient in some way because they emit chemicals when harmed or recoil. My knee jumps up if I tap it with a hammer, my brain pulls my hand away from a hot stove before I can even register any pain, neither of those are "sentient" actions, that's just how the cells respond to stimulus, and that automatic response is because of natural selection, not sentient choices or sensations. It's like saying an auto-closing door is sentient and we ought not try to open it because whenever you try to open it it closes itself, so it "dislikes" being open.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 210d
victorz@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 211d
I feel like we shouldn't be doing that regardless of their intellect. I eat meat btw. I believe in free roaming meat of all kinds.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · -16 pts · 211d
I agree actually. Im just warning you this post will be a vegan magnet.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 211d
Vegans are fine.
I do take issue with PETA tho as they have wiped out local economies and thrust them into poverty with their anti-fur stance.
PlaidBaron@lemmy.world · -10 pts · 211d
Yup. My comment isnt anti-vegan for the record. They just show up en mass.
HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 211d
As I do for misogynistic trash articles.
To each their own.
mika_mika@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 210d
Don't worry, this animal wielding a stick is still incomprehensibly dumb enough that it still would look good on a barbecue.
I get why you would think that vegans would use this as a "see! I told you animals were complex!" but no one ever said they weren't, just that they are tasty.
einkorn@feddit.org · -2 pts · 211d
I'm not vegan btw.