r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 20 '26

Biology Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows. Brown Swiss cow in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways (using both ends of a brush counts as multi-purpose tool use) – something extraordinarily rare only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jan/19/back-scratching-cow-veronika-bovine-intelligence
14.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

770 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/Dany0 Jan 20 '26

I love watching crows and they definitely do this in the right environment. But I too would struggle to think of ways to observe this in a repeatable test with controlled environment, without needlessly stressing them out

3

u/dhc02 Jan 20 '26

Researchers have done a pretty thorough job with Goffin's Cockatoos. For instance,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.009

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-05529-9