Veronika spends her days in the idyllic pastures of southern Austria, where she lives with her family. And every now and then, she picks up a broom to scratch those hard-to-reach areas of her back.
None of that would be particularly newsworthy, except that Veronika is a brown cow. Her ability to employ tools with multiple uses leaves her in the company of only two known species: humans and chimps.
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Researcher Alice Auersperg visited and studied Veronika and co-authored a paper titled “Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow” in a recent issue of Current Biology. She joins host Robin Young to talk about animal intelligence and why the broom matters.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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