Cow uses tool to scratch herself

I read a related article in the NYT yesterday: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/science/animals-cows-inte...

Which cited the original study here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)...

Sort of an interesting precedent (quote from NYT article):

> "Now, in a new study, Veronika has demonstrated even more advanced scratching skills, deploying different ends of a wooden broom to target different parts of her body. It is, scientists say, an example of flexible tool use, a behavior that is relatively rare in the animal kingdom. The paper, which was published in Current Biology on Monday, is the first scientific paper to describe tool use in cattle, which have not traditionally been celebrated for their smarts."

people generally misunderstand the intelligence of cows.

My uncle ran a small dairy farm,

his cows were able to do vibe coding

It was amazing to watch, a cow swishing it tail across a keyboard prompting some pucker vibe.

It was very discombobulating and upsetting when they had to go to the slaughter house.

Such a waste of good talent prompting instead of writing real ode

c'est la vie

I never really thought about cows having the ability to problem solve like that. It makes sense that she learned this just because she had a better setup than most cattle. It really makes you wonder what else they could do if they had more objects to interact with.

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46681153