alt Hacker Newsthe researcher documented a cow using a stick to scratch itself. no doubt they're intelligent animals but describing them as using 'sophisticated tools' is a bit of a stretch.
this behaviour is quite common in cattle and other animals, often seen rubbing or using sticks to scratch spots. sometimes it is dangerous as they find fences with nail poking out and cut themselves when rubbing to to calm an itch.
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> no doubt they're intelligent animals
Having spent my childhood around cows, I can say there's a great deal of doubt in my mind on that point. I know from extensive first-hand experience that cows are quite stupid.
This cow picked up the stick (broom) and wielded it clenched within her teeth. Quite different than rubbing against a static object.
Defining tool use is subtle. Here's one defintion:
"... the tool is a detached object (rock) used to procure some thing (food) ordinarily incapable of being accessed without a tool.". Also it is "manipulated independent of its location." [0]
Rubbing against a tree is not tool use. Similarly, dropping a nut on a rock is not tool use, but dropping a rock on a nut is.
It gets a bit more complex: You can pickup a stick and use it (similar to the cow); you can first prepare the stick by stripping leaves and branches off (some primates); you can bend the stick into a useful hook (New Caledonian crows).
Look up corvids and especially New Caledonian crows. they are pretty amazing; in some tasks they apparently outperform all primates except one particular species.
I like to claim that dinosaurs used tools, because some of them swallowed gastroliths. No reason a tool can't be internal.
Oh wait, the article says external is in the "scientific definition". Fine.
"This behavior is quite common..." is very misleading. This specific behavior is not common. Scratching an itch does not equal using a tool to scratch an itch. Every animal I've seen in nature knows how to use external static objects to help them scratch somewhere they can't reach. Dogs cats, bears, pigs, cows... etc. I think my cats are very intelligent, I've seen them use the bristle brush attachment we have on the wall to scratch themselves. If I ever watched one of them pick up a fork with their mouth and orient it in a way to scratch their back I would absolutely lose my mind. These are not the same behaviors.