Meet the world's smartest COW! Brown Swiss named Veronika has worked out how to scatch her back with a stick - a sign of 'extraordinary intelligence'

UK Daily Mail ^ | January 20, 2026 | Adam Pogrund

[C19fan]

A back scratching bovine has forced scientists to reassess the intelligence of cattle.

Veronika, a brown Swiss cow from the Austrian village of Carinthia, shocked researchers with the first documented case of a cow working out how to scratch itself with a stick.

The clever creature also recognises family members' voices and hurries to meet them when called.

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TOPICS: Pets/Animals
KEYWORDS: animals; scatch; tools

[maddog55]

Smarter than the American liberal...

[C19fan]

I wonder if Hindus will make a pilgrimage to worship this cow.

[SaveFerris]

Animals are pretty clever

There was the ape(?) 🦧 or monkey 🐒 that
learned how to use a stick to capture bugs
out of a hole in a tree (IIRC)

no doubt the World Economic Forum is jealous...

[fruser1]

If I have seen further than other men, it is only because I have stood upon the shoulders of cows - Isaac Mooton.

[SaveFerris]

Speaking of clever and smart animals...

“Transphobic Horses” 🐴🐴

Found the video

https://youtu.be/hwNow1GoGUk?si=iyTMhklyJkQ8OEVk

I realized that the gif was Sky News
Australia 🦘 which is often GREAT 👍

Horses 🐴🐴 CAN see color BUT

AI Overview

Yes, horses can see color, but their color vision is different from humans. Horses are dichromats, meaning they have two types of cone cells in their eyes, allowing them to see blues and yellows.

Humans, on the other hand, are trichromats with three types of cone cells, enabling them to see a wider spectrum of colors, including reds and greens.

Dichromatic Vision:

Horses can distinguish between blue and yellow, but they cannot differentiate between red and green.

Color Perception:

For horses, colors like red and green appear as shades of gray or brown.

Yellow:

Horses are most likely to see yellow well.

Red-Green Color Blindness:

In essence, horses have a form of red-green color blindness according to UC Davis.

Practical Implications:

This difference in color vision can be important when considering how horses perceive their environment. For example, they may react differently to objects or obstacles depending on their color.

[tet68]

In the land of horses the traffic 🚦 lights are blue and yellow...

[SaveFerris]

Cool!

[Ikeon]

How dumb has society become when a midget cow scratches its back with a stick becomes world news? Idiocracy.

[Hot Tabasco]

That’s cool, but I want to see the cow sweep the floor with that broom.

[Ezekiel]

Horses are dichromats, meaning they have two types of cone cells in their eyes, allowing them to see blues and yellows.

Wow, all along such a big misunderstanding. Turns out that those Russian troikas were simply attracted to the flags in Ukraine.

[Ezekiel]

Gary Larson's 1982 Far Side cartoon, Cow Tools, featured a cow standing behind a table of shoddily crafted items.

It confused readers, including his mother, forcing him to explain: 'While I have never met a cow who could make tools, I felt sure that if I did, they [the tools] would lack something in sophistication and resemble the sorry specimens shown.'

It became a classic because it left the readers scratching their heads.

[Buttons12]

Teach just one horse to use a backscratcher stick, and in no time every horse in the stable will be doing it. It will look like the violin section, only quieter.

[Fury]

Brown Swiss are not a “midget” cattle breed.

Educate yourself.

[Cowgirl of Justice]

We had a basset hound who pushed a dining room chair through three rooms to the kitchen. He used it as a ladder to get to the artisan bread I had purchased from the farmer’s market. My husband I joked that if we wanted something that smart, we would have had children.

Several years later, we were going on a 2 week vacation with our dogs and as we were packing they were so excited. I gave them each a Milk Bone so we could pack the rest of our suitcases before we loaded them up. Our basset immediately ran upstairs with it. Coming back home two weeks later, he was sitting quietly by the back passenger door, unlike our other dog who was so excited to be getting home. We walked in the back door and our basset immediately ran upstairs and came back downstairs with his Milk Bone. He had been thinking about it for the entire two weeks and even though he was entirely food motivated, he chose to save it for later rather than eat it before we left. I was talking to our vet he said that a dog’s intelligence is measured through how long their memory is. Drug dogs, bomb sniffing dogs - they will play with a toy which is then taken away and they are ‘judged’ by how long they remember to look for it.

My dog was basically Einstein. Miss. you, Georgie. 💔

[Cowgirl of Justice]

Also, he would sit up on his butt when he wanted something. We actually caught him sitting up for our other dog, wanting the treat he had.

We laughed so much with this little guy. He was the best.

[mairdie]

The special ones carve a permanent place in our hearts. My deepest sympathies on your loss of Georgie.

[Flavious_Maximus]

There is a guy on YouTube who records videos of daily life on his cattle farm. He has two big bulls named Rufus and Redford that are very smart and approach him when he calls out their names.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9jPv9v2ypw

[Cowgirl of Justice]

❤️

Thank you.

Very much.

[Organic Panic]

Is this satire? I have goats that do this. I guess I should call the daily fail and report them as the smartest animals in the world.