SAN FRANCISCO, 16 February – Move over chimpanzees and humans, there’s a new brainiac in the fold. An astonishing discovery has revealed the brainpower of cows.
A nature-loving family in the mountains of Southern Austria has a pet brown cow named Veronica. At the age of three, Veronica began to pick up sticks. Soon after, the family noticed Veronica using sticks to scratch herself.
Researchers studying tool-using animals visited Veronica. They were curious to test her cognitive ability. So, they gave her a broom and were gobsmacked by the outcome.
Veronica examined the broom. She grasped it and used its bristled head with a ‘placing/pulling’ technique to scratch her hide. Several moments later, Veronica reversed the broom and carefully scratched her sensitive utter and anus regions. This time the broom handle was maneuvered with a ‘poking/lifting’ procedure.
Veronica demonstrated both innovative and multi-purpose tool use, two key aspects of intelligence. Until ‘Veronica the tooler’ was discovered, using a single tool for multiple purposes was an ability only previously observed in chimpanzees and humans.
At roughly 400 million metric tons, cows make up the biggest planetary biomass. This herd of 1.5 billion cattle are inflicting horrendous damage to Mother Earth.
In order to feed cattle, native Rainforests are being razed at warp speed to grow feed, soy and corn. In turn, this subsidised mayhem is accelerating the Sixth Mass Extinction, and hurrying global heating. Cattle are the primary agricultural source of heat-trapping methane. Additionally, cattle, chicken, pig and sheep effluent runoff are asphyxiating the ocean and expanding 400 oceanic dead zones. Lastly, beef requires mega gallons of freshwater, a rapidly diminishing indispensable natural resource.
For the record, when you buy a cheeseburger, you are also buying 2400 litres (634g) of water used to make that burger. Most of the water is used in producing the beef. That beef has a water footprint of 15,000 litres (3963g) for every 1-kilogram (2.2lb) portion.
Because many humans eat cows, there is an assumption that cows are not intelligent. Plainly, that’s a misassumption. Veronica the cow, a multi-purpose tool user, is an intelligent sentient mammal.
People attribute less intelligence to the animals they eat compared to a billion worldwide animal pets (cats and dogs). Obviously, we need to rethink our relationship to all planetary domesticated and wild animals because they, too, feel agonising pain. Mercy!
A healthy, water-smart, compassionate, plant-based way of life is the answer. Incidentally, scrumptious animal-free whole food meals are budget-friendly.
Exploring wilderness is prompting biologists to decipher animal languages, like those of the Sperm whales, birds, bees and natural soundscapes. Languages are the gateway to other attributes of animal cognition, such as: thinking, memory, perception, attention, play, decision-making, grief and love.
AI is assisting humankind in getting to know our planetary brethren and sistren, the animals. Animals are the veins, arteries and capillaries of all earthly biomes. And once we know our planetary family, then we will protect them and their habitats. Bring on kindness, post-haste.
Agitate. Disrupt. Defend
Reese Halter is a bees/trees/seas defender.
Unearthly Wails is a special edition, a collection of poetry
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