AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In case you haven't heard, cows are using tools now. Well, one cow, Veronika, a brown cow in Switzerland that used a broom to scratch her back and belly. Alice Auersperg wrote a book about animal innovations and ever since has received videos of animals using tools. One day, she opened a video of a cow named Veronika, which she described to NPR's Nate Rott last week.
ALICE AUERSPERG: Veronika just rolled out her pink tongue. With the tip of the tongue, she grabbed, like, with an index finger, the stick, pulled the tongue back into the mouth, and Veronika just turned her head and started scratching her rear end.
RASCOE: Auersperg co-wrote a study published in Current Biology about the finding. That caught the attention of Aaron Wells, who knows a thing or two about cow tools.
AARON WELLS: I run a Bluesky account called Cow Tools Daily, and I moderate a Facebook group all about cow tool memes as well.
RASCOE: That's Cow Tools, as in the infamous comic panel from The Far Side by Gary Larson.
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GARY LARSON: I drew this cartoon. Showing a cow standing in front of, like, a workbench, looking out at the reader. And on the workbench were these just amorphous shapes.
RASCOE: Gary Larson speaking with WHYY's Fresh Air in 1998.
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LARSON: I was thinking about how anthropologists used to define man as being the only animal that made and used tools. And then they subsequently discovered that, well, even some birds and primates do that, so they had to change the definition a little. But I started thinking about what if cows started make - made tools. What would they make?
RASCOE: The tools that Larson dreamed up - a blob, a blob with a handle, something that looks like a saw and a long stick with prongs on it are mysterious. He said only the cow knows what they are.
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LARSON: The reaction was unbelievable. I thought it was the end of my career, honestly, because I just started getting a barrage of phone calls and letters and...
TERRY GROSS: Saying what?
LARSON: Well, saying, what does it mean?
RASCOE: Seeing everyone ask that question attracted Aaron Wells to the comic. Now it's become a cult favorite. And Wells says the discovery of Veronika using her own tool is something to celebrate.
WELLS: For someone that is a huge fan of the Cow Tools comic, it's probably about the most exciting thing that could happen. It's like, wow, it's - we did it. Mission accomplished.
RASCOE: Wells says fans of the comic are editing Veronika into the panel, including using that long stick with prongs to scratch her back.
WELLS: Veronika, the cow, you know, all hail the new queen of Cow Tools.
RASCOE: A tribute to a prophecy more than 40 years in the making.
(SOUNDBITE OF HUGH MASEKELA'S "GRAZING IN THE GRASS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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