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Cake day: October 18th, 2024

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  • From the article …

    Tool use is well known in chimps, crows, dolphins and even octopuses. The latter have been filmed throwing shells at one another. But livestock have never been considered the sharpest of animals. Gary Larson’s 1982 Far Side cartoon, Cow Tools, shows a cow standing behind a table of oddly shaped objects. It confused scores of readers, including Larson’s mother, prompting 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.”

    There is no suggestion that Veronika’s skills are evidence of the evolution of an ominous new species of super-cow. As the scientists write in the study: “She did not fashion tools like the cow in Gary Larson’s cartoon, but she selected, adjusted and used one with notable dexterity and flexibility. Perhaps the real absurdity lies not in imagining a tool-using cow, but in assuming such a thing could never exist.”