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Alice Auersperg

Alice Auersperg

Austrian biologist

Oct 9, 2026

3:15
Could you describe for us the work that you and your colleagues have been doing with Veronica?
3:20
So this was a completely accidental story.
3:23
Veronica is a brown cattle cow, a Corinthian mountain cow.
3:28
And last year, I published a book about animal innovation in German.
3:32
And I got lots of feedback from people telling me about their innovative pets.
3:37
And those range from cats that were using a box as a tool to sleep in through people observing crows that were putting nuts on the street for the cars to drive over, which is an actual innovation.
3:50
But I got a phone video from somebody.

55 MINS LATER

58:46
Right, right, right.
18:56
I asked Alice how she first learned about Veronica's penchant for tool use.
19:00
Yeah, well, I'm interested in animal innovation, so how animals come up with completely new behaviours inventively.
19:07
And I wrote a book about this.
19:08
And after I've written this book, I got lots of emails from people sending me examples of their animals using tools.
19:15
And there was quite a range.
19:17
So there were people that told me that their cat was using the Amazon box as a house and people that the dog is using the stick to brush his teeth.
19:25
And then I got this one video which was a little more than interesting because...
23:51
What do you take away from this, Alice?

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