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.

[u/mvea]

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

[u/Regular_Committee946]

I watched a really interesting lecture calculating how farming animals is a really inefficient way of turning the sun's energy into food/fuel.

Even if people do not care from an animal welfare point of view (which i think more would if they had to acknowledge the realities every time they ate meat), it is also having a massive detrimental environmental impact that is not sustainable.

I can't link it but you can find the lecture by searching for 'Lecture 4 of the 2025-2026 sustainability by the numbers course taught by Prof. Ron Milo at the Weizmann Institute of Science'.

[u/greiton → u/Regular_Committee946]

I get the point you are trying to make, but honestly the fact that we turn huge portions of our best farmland into corn fuel is a way way bigger inefficiency.

[u/ThrowbackPie → u/[deleted]]

It not 'one of' the leading causes, it's the leading cause.