The cow is called Veronika and she is 13 years old.
I have seen a photograph of Herr Wiegele and he looks plump and cheerful in the traditional manner of bakers. But it is Veronika the cow who is the point of the story.
The situation is even worse for quadrupeds who lack the extended reach of arms. A dog with fleas will sit and twist its spine and go at the itch with a frantic rear paw, but there’s a limit to the paw’s range. If the flea lies beyond it the only option for the dog is to roll on its back and writhe.
I have seen horses writhe on their backs, too, presumably for the same purpose. But I have not seen cows do so.
I suspect that being such cumbersome creatures with stocky legs they would struggle to get back up. So a cow with an itch has only one way of relieving it, which is to rub up against stuff.
Once on a dairy farm in Switzerland I saw a wall-mounted electronic back-scratcher for cows, resembling one of those rotating shoe brush machines you used to find in posh lavatories. The cows, complete with cornily traditional bells, were queuing up for their turn.
And this is where Veronika comes in. She’s jumped that queue. She scratches her own back.
The story goes that Herr Wiegele the baker observed her picking up sticks and seeming to scratch herself with them.
Film of this reached the cognitive biologists at the Messerli Research Unit in Vienna, who were so intrigued that, like the three wise men, they set off to see the wonder for themselves.
They took with them not gold, nor frankincense, nor yet a little myrrh, but a stiff-bristled broom. And when they came within the presence of the great cow they knelt down before her and made an offering of it.
The scientists later admitted they had little faith, but they underestimated Veronika. Immediately recognising the broom’s potential she wrapped her meaty tongue around the handle, turned her cumbrous head and swept her back with the broom.
Over the next few days the scientists went on to observe that Veronika the wonder cow varied her technique according to region — using the harsh bristles on her tough upper hide, but the smooth handle on her delicate underparts.
Veronika had not only invented a tool, she had adapted it for use.
The scientists have concluded three main factors contributed to Veronika’s behaviour: she has lived to be 13 (few dairy cows get past six), her environment is mixed and stimulating and she has daily human contact.
The implication, then, is not that Veronika is a prodigy among cows, but that cows in general are a lot cleverer than we think if only we give them the chance.
We are smug about tools. We see them as our unique specialty, the skill that has enabled us to lord it over the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and the lilies of the valley.
If we catch any other beast using tools — a chimp smashing nuts with a stone, a crow hunting insects with a stick — we drench them with patronage, congratulating them for having groped a few millimetres up the pole of intellectual grandeur that we sit smugly on top of.
How clever of them to be a little like us. And we are nice to them in consequence, or at least nicer than we are to dairy cows.
The story of Veronika suggests we underestimate a lot of animals due to our anthropocentric view of the world. But there’s a further point.
When I first saw the film of cow and broom I assumed it had been generated by AI. AI looks likely to be the first tool we have invented that will itself invent tools.
Indeed if we are not careful — and we show little sign of being so — it may prove to be the tool that uses us.
Who knows, it may eventually herd us into paddocks for as long as we serve its needs.
• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
