A single cow in the Austrian Alps is forcing scientists to redraw the mental line that separates “clever” animals from the livestock we mostly treat as background scenery. By picking up brushes, sticks, rakes and even a wooden broom to scratch exactly where she itches, Veronika is not just going viral, she is quietly expanding what researchers thought cattle brains could do. Her tool use looks simple at first glance, but the closer I look at the data, the more it reads like a challenge to long‑held assumptions about animal intelligence.
For decades, complex tool use has been reserved for a short list of usual suspects: chimpanzees, crows, some dolphins, a few elephants. Cows, by contrast, have been bred for milk and meat, not for starring roles in cognition studies. Veronika’s behavior, now documented in controlled experiments, suggests that gap has less to do with ability than with attention. We simply have not been looking closely enough.
The cow in the mountain village who picked up a broom
Veronika is a 13‑year‑old Swiss Brown cow who lives in a mountain village in the Austrian countryside, a setting that sounds pastoral until you realize it has become a live laboratory for animal cognition. Her human companion, Jan, began noticing that she did more than rub against fences or trees. Over time, Veronika started grasping long objects in her mouth and maneuvering them with surprising precision to reach awkward spots on her body, behavior that turned her from anonymous farm animal into a case study in how a cow can use a tool. Clips of Veronika manipulating brushes and other objects quickly spread online, drawing the attention of researchers who specialize in animal behavior.
Those viral moments were not a one‑off trick. An Austrian cow named Veronika has become an overnight social media sensation after a video showed her using sticks, rakes and brooms to scratch herself, a pattern of behavior that suggests she has developed her own method to relieve itches rather than relying only on fixed instincts. In the shared footage, Jan appears alongside An Austrian Swiss Brown cow who seems entirely at ease picking up long‑handled tools and repositioning them until the bristles or stick land exactly where she wants them.
From barnyard quirk to peer‑reviewed experiment
What began as an eye‑catching quirk has now been formalized in a study of what scientists call “flexible egocentric tooling,” a mouthful that essentially means using an object in different ways depending on where your own body needs help. Researchers designed controlled tests for a pet cow, Bos taurus, named Veronika, offering her a deck brush and other implements to see whether she would adjust how she held them to reach different body parts. According to the paper in Current Biology, Veronika consistently repositioned the same tool to scratch different regions, a level of flexibility that has rarely been documented in livestock.
In those tests, Veronika was presented with a wooden broom and other long objects, and scientists recorded which end she chose and which body part she targeted. The results, described in detail by Current Biolog, show that she selected different ends of the tool depending on the task, a kind of multi‑purpose problem solving that has been consistently reported in chimpanzees but never before in a cow. One analysis notes that Veronika’s innovative behavior is the first documented case of tool use in a pet cow, a finding that, as Veronika’s study makes clear, calls for a reassessment of livestock cognition.
What Veronika actually does with her tools
Seen up close, Veronika’s technique looks less like random fumbling and more like deliberate engineering. In one widely shared sequence, Veronika the brown cow picks up a rake or deck brush in her mouth, walks a few steps, then angles the handle so the bristled end can reach an itch on her neck or flank. Observers describe how Veronika the cow adjusts her grip until the tool’s working end lands on the precise spot that is bothering her, behavior that suggests she has a mental map of her own body and of how the object can be repurposed.
Now, in a new study, Veronika has demonstrated even more advanced scratching skills, deploying different ends of a wooden broom to reach specific areas, and doing so in ways that matched what scientists predicted a flexible tool user would do. When the itch was on her back, she tended to use the bristled side; when it was on her head or neck, she sometimes flipped to the smoother end, a pattern documented in detail in Veronika focused experiments. Another account notes that Veronika, a cow living in a mountain village in the Austrian countryside, has spent years perfecting the art of scratching herself with sticks and brooms, using the same object for different tasks in a way that, as one analysis of Veronika highlights, has previously been consistently reported in chimpanzees.
Have we underestimated cattle minds?
For years, the scientific conversation about animal intelligence has revolved around charismatic species that fit neatly into our idea of “smart,” while farm animals were treated as interchangeable units. The question “Have we underestimated the gentle bovines all this time?” is no longer rhetorical when a Swiss Brown cow is calmly solving mechanical problems in a barnyard. Reports that invite readers to Have we underestimated cattle describe how Meet Veronika, the 13‑year‑old Swiss Brown, has forced scientists to confront the possibility that livestock have been quietly capable of more complex behavior all along.
That reassessment is not just philosophical. A new study describes the first documented case of tool use by a cow and places it in the context of how humans have used cattle for millennia for milk and meat, often without asking what kind of inner lives they might have. Coverage of the research notes that Animals experts now argue that cows may be smarter than we thought, and that the case of Veronika is prompting fresh scrutiny of how we house, handle and value these animals. One detailed report on Cows using tools frames Veronika’s behavior as a direct challenge to the idea that farm animals are simple, unthinking resources.
The scientists, the skeptics and the next frontier
Researchers who work with Veronika are careful not to overstate what one cow can prove, but they are equally clear that her case cannot be dismissed as a fluke. Dr Antonio Osuna‑Mascaro of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna has said that his team was not expecting cows to be able to use tools in such a flexible way, and that the findings should encourage people to value the natural world more broadly. His comments, reported in coverage of Dr Antonio Osuna, underline how surprising it is to see a species long associated with passive grazing instead manipulating objects with apparent foresight.
At the same time, the scientific community is already asking what comes next. Some researchers point out that Veronika is a pet cow who lives in unusually enriched conditions, which may have given her more opportunity to experiment than typical herd animals receive. Others note that Veronica, an Austrian Swiss brown cow featured in broadcast footage, has demonstrated similar tool‑use behavior by maneuvering sticks and brooms to scratch specific areas, suggesting that this capacity might not be unique to a single individual. The video of Veronica has been cited by experts who argue that cattle cognition is richer than previously understood, and that systematic studies of more herds could reveal a hidden layer of problem solving in barns and pastures around the world.
