January 19, 2026

TO BOLDLY GO WHERE GARY LARSON HAS GONE BEFORE: Outstanding in her field: cow recorded using tool for first time.

Cows are not usually credited with thinking on the hoof. They eat, they chew, they stand in fields performing an activity that may look like contemplation but is generally written off as digestion.

They are not typically thought to plan, let alone solve problems. A new study suggests we may have underestimated them.

The research describes what experts claim is the first documented case of flexible, multi-purpose tool use in cattle, observed in a cow named Veronika.

Veronika is a Swiss brown cow kept not for milk or meat but as a pet by Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker in Austria. More than a decade ago he noticed her using a long-handled brush, holding it in her mouth to scratch awkward parts of her body.

When video footage of this behaviour reached Alice Auersperg, a cognitive biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, it struck her as unusual, largely because Veronika used the brush in different ways to scratch different parts of her body.

“It was immediately clear that this was not accidental,” Auersperg said. “This was a meaningful example of tool use in a species that is rarely considered from a cognitive perspective.”

Yes, the European mind cannot comprehend the notion of cows using tools. But we Americans have been wrestling with the notion of cow tools since 1982, when an early edition of Gary Larson’s classic “Far Side” cartoon appeared in hundreds of local newspapers:

In his 1989 anthology, The Prehistory of the Far Side, Larson wrote:

The “Cow tools” episode is one that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. A week after it was published back in 1982, I wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die.

Cows, as some Far Side readers know, are a favorite subject of mine. I’ve always found them to be the quintessentially absurd animal for situations even more absurd. Even the name “cow,” to me, is intrinsically funny.

And so one day I started thinking back on an anthropology course I had in college and how we learned that man used to be defined as “the only animal that made and shaped tools.” Unfortunately, researchers discovered that certain primates and even some bird species did the same thing—so the definition had to be extended somewhat to avoid awkward situations such as someone hiring a crew of chimpanzees to remodel their kitchen.

Inevitably, I began thinking about cows, and what if they, too, were discovered as toolmakers. What would they make? Primitive tools are always, well, primitive-looking—appearing rather nondescript to the lay person. So, it seemed to me, whatever a cow would make would have to be even a couple notches further down the “skill-o-meter.”

I imagined, and subsequently drew, a cow standing next to her workbench, proudly displaying her handiwork (hoofwork?). The “cow tools” were to be just meaningless artifacts—only the cow or a cowthropologist is supposed to know what they’re used for.

The first mistake I made was in thinking this was funny. The second was making one of the tools resemble a crude handsaw—which made already confused people decide that their only hope in understanding the cartoon meant deciphering what the other tools were as well. Of course, they didn’t have a chance in hell.

But, for the first time, “Cow tools” awakened me to the fact that my profession was not just an isolated exercise in the corner of my apartment. The day after its release, my phone began to ring with inquiries from reporters and radio stations from regions in the country where The Far Side was published. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know what in the world this cartoon meant! My syndicate was equally bombarded, and I was ultimately asked to write a press release explaining “Cow tools.” Someone sent me the front page of one newspaper which, down in one corner, ran the tease, “Cow Tools: What does it mean? (See pg. B14.)” I was mortified.

In the first year or two of drawing The Far Side, I always believed my career perpetually hung by a thread. And this time I was convinced it had been finally severed. Ironically, when the dust had finally settled and as a result of all the “noise” it made, “Cow tools” became more of a boost to The Far Side than anything else.

So, in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood and wasn’t funny and therefore I went on to even greater success and recognition.

Yeah—I like this country.

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll