Jan 25, 2026 When the Cows Come Home – or Use Tools?

If the animal protection movement were to anoint an official cartoonist, it would most likely have selected Gary Larson and his iconic “The Far Side” cartoon series. From early in the 1980s, it was virtually impossible to attend an animal protection conference without seeing a slide presentation featuring a Gary Larson cartoon about animal characters. Our particular favorite was a twist on the classical lifeboat ethical problem. Larson drew a cartoon featuring three men and a dog in a boat in the middle of the ocean. The dog is looking down his nose at the man in the back of the boat while one of the men in the front says, “Fair is fair, Larry… We’re out of food, we drew straws – you lost.”

Larson frequently featured cows in his cartoons, with one of his most famous cow-themed cartoons titled “Cow Tools.” This cartoon generated significant reactions from readers. It featured a cow standing on its hind legs, looking down at a table filled with various strange-looking tools. Many readers found the image puzzling and wrote to Larson seeking an explanation of the joke. He clarified that the humor was based on the idea that, if cows were to create tools, those tools would lack sophistication, which was the cartoon’s central point. Larson found endless inspiration in cow-themed cartoons and once remarked that even the word “cow” was somewhat peculiar.

Larson would no doubt be delighted to learn that Veronika, a cow in Austria kept as a family pet, has been observed using a tool. In this case, the “tool” is a broom provided by her owner, the community baker. Veronika picks up the broom with her tongue and then holds the broom in her mouth and uses one end to scratch herself. She uses the brush end to scratch her back and the handle end to deal with itches on her belly, where the brush would likely be a bit too scratchy.

Veronika’s tool use has been documented by animal cognition researcher, Dr. Antonio Osuna-Mascaro and his PhD supervisor, Professor Alice Ausperg at the Messerli Research Institute, University of Vienna. Their findings were published in the academic journal Current Biology. They note that Veronika’s behavior is the first documented case of tool use by cattle.

Auersperg, who has written a book about tool use in the animal kingdom, was initially skeptical  when a friend reached out to her, claiming she knew the baker and shared a video of the 13-year-old cow using the broom. To qualify as tool use, an animal’s behavior must meet at least three criteria: the tool must become an extension of the animal’s body, it must enable the animal to accomplish a task that would otherwise be very difficult, and the animal must change the orientation of the tool to make it effective. Veronika’s use of the broom satisfied all three requirements.

Perhaps the next installment of “The Far Side” will feature cows not just coming home—but tidying up with their own toolkits.