Scientists Can't Quite Believe What This Cow Did With A Broom

The ability to use and manipulate tools is one of the things that set the Stone Age man apart from the vast majority of creatures it shared this planet with. Being able to bend the world around us to our will has enabled all of our greatest works and allowed us to dominate our ecology in ways that other animals can't. But we're not alone in our capacity to use tools. There are a few animals that can also use the world around them in unique ways, but no one really expected to see it in domestic cows.

Veronika the cow was first made known to science when a video of her scratching herself with a rake was sent to animal intelligence researchers at the University of Vienna. To be fair, this wasn't the first video of a cow scratching itself to have emerged online, but this is the first time that researchers have been able to observe it in the field and gather scientific evidence. 

So, like... that tool use in a boviid, isn't it? pic.twitter.com/0SjzhFIO2E

— Swamp_Ape_Science (@SouthApe) September 26, 2025

What the scientists found doesn't place cows at the top of the tier list for smart animals, but it does reframe our perception of them. As detailed in Current Biology, the researchers presented Veronika with a deck brush and then just watched what happened. To their surprise, Veronika wasn't just using the brush to scratch herself; she was planning out where she would scratch ahead of time and grabbing the brush at the right place. What's more, she was choosing which side of the brush to use based on where she was scratching: bristles for her back and rump, and the blunt handle for her softer belly.

One of the earliest reports of tool use among animals was Edna Fisher's 1939 paper which contains her observations of sea otters using rocks to break open mussel shells. The idea of tool-using animals didn't really enter the zeitgeist until 1971, however, after Jane Goodall observed chimps using twigs to fish termites out of their nests for a quick snack. Since then, tool-use has been observed in dozens of primate species, and dozens of other species besides.

In the ocean, dolphins will use a sea sponge to protect their beak when foraging on the sea bed. On land, both Asian and African elephants have been observed using logs and trees to remove fences in their path. A honey badger in South Africa is internet-famous for using rocks, rakes, and a self-made mud ramp to escape his enclosure.

Tool use among animals is actually kind of hard to pin down. Cases like Veronika's are pretty cut and dry, but the case of a horse using a post to scratch itself isn't so easy to categorize, even though the animals in both cases are achieving the same ends. Likewise, most agree that a baboon throwing rocks to ward off a predator is tool use, but antlions and archer fish throwing sand or water at prey remain edge cases. But at least in the case of Veronika the cow, researchers have come to realize that it might be worth revisiting just how we think about animals — even everyday livestock.