I\u2019m pleased for Veronika the cow, obviously. It\u2019s nice that, alone among cowkind, she has developed flexible tool use. It\u2019s nicer still that in her Austrian pastures, manipulating an old broom amid the edelweiss, she no longer has an itchy back.<\/p>\n
But am I impressed? On this point I differ from the millions who watched Veronika scratching her flank in a video to accompany a research paper in the journal Current Biology. Her actions, it was claimed, changed our understanding of animal cognition \u2014 making human cognition a little less special in the process.<\/p>\n
Maybe. Yet when it comes to unexpected animal tool use, Veronika\u2019s undoubted achievement doesn\u2019t make my top five. Those five? The dolphins of Shark Bay, Australia, obviously. They put sea sponges on their noses for comfort when snuffing around for prey on the seabed. There are the elephants that clean their ears with grass. There are Aesop\u2019s crows which, like in the fable, put stones into a jug until the water level is high enough to drink.<\/p>\n
\u2022 VIDEO \u2014 Outstanding in her field: cow recorded using tool for first time<\/a><\/p>\n No list could exclude the cute sea otters, which carry small rocks under their forearms so they can use them to mercilessly smash shellfish. My favourite? The Japanese crows that drop nuts on to a zebra crossing, then wait for cars to crack them.<\/p>\n What does this mean? Once, we thought tool use uniquely human. When it was spotted in chimpanzees, the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey said: \u201cNow we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.\u201d<\/p>\n We keep doing this. Once we thought humans unique in planning for the future. Tell that to Santino the zoo chimp, who stunned cognition researchers (metaphorically) and tourists (literally) by collecting rocks at night to throw at visitors by day. <\/p>\n Maybe what makes us special is culture: accumulated knowledge and fashions? Let me introduce you to the salmon hat orcas. Nearly 30 years ago, for just one season, a pod was spotted sporting a fetching dead salmon. Then in late 2024 \u2014 like discovering that fascinators were back at Ascot \u2014 they did it again.<\/p>\n