Cows can tell humans apart, new study finds
A recent study reveals that cows possess a greater level of intelligence than previously thought. The research indicates that domestic cows can recognize and differentiate between human faces and voices. This finding suggests that cows are capable of complex cognitive functions, which could have implications for their welfare and treatment.
- ▪Cows can recognize and distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar human faces and voices.
- ▪The study involved 32 Prim’Holstein cows, a common dairy breed in France.
- ▪Cows showed a preference for unfamiliar faces and could match voices to known faces.
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| Original publisher | Popular Science |
| Canonical URL | https://www.popsci.com/environment/cows-tell-humans-apart/ |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 14:00:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T18:10:02.948Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T18:10:02.948Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | wPfxmpp3yx4Q |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Cows might be more intelligent than we thought. Image: Shutterstock Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Email address Sign up Thank you! Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Cows are not necessarily known for their intelligence, but that less-than-stellar reputation is beginning to change. A 13-year-old pet cow in Austria named Veronika uses brooms to scratch her back, which qualifies as a form of tool use. Tool use is considered a general marker for intelligence in animals. The domestic cow species that live in close contact with humans are also highly social animals, another sign of intelligence. New research finds that one domestic species of cow (Bos taurus taurus) can recognize humans and distinguish between them.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Popular Science.
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