If your cats picked up a fork, it would be to eat you after they killed you in your sleep; but, I could see how that could be considered “scratching an itch.”

I've seen my cats pull on a cord in order to reel in the toy at the end. I don't find that to be all too different from the cow orienting a scratcher. Should I?

I swallowed a rock when I was a kid (ok, maybe calling it a "rock" is being a bit dramatic, more like a pebble), does that make me a tool?

....wait, no

Tool use by non-humans > Mammals > Other mammals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_non-humans#Other_m...

Having spent my entire life around cows I can say there's a great deal of evidence that cows are quite intelligent. Most of the time when people say they're dumb it's because they're hindering a human from forcing them to do something. Why should a cow "know" to go one way or the other or to not stop in a chute, or to not back up...these are just human constraints. We know what we WANT the cow to do and if they don't do that they're dumb. Sure I've seen cows do dumb things. If I was an outside observer looking at the severity and frequency that humans do dumb things I would come to the same conclusion, they're dumb.