But in a world that treats cows as commodities, it’s no surprise that research on who they are is lacking. Overwhelmingly, research on cows focuses on how these animals can be used to maximize the profits of farming industries. They ask questions like, How can we make cows grow bigger bodies in smaller spaces? or How quickly after her calf is taken away can a mother cow be reimpregnated to maximize her efficiency?

Imagine how our conversations would shift if we focused on who cows are instead of focusing on how we can use them!

That’s the goal of The Someone Project’s white paper, Thinking Cows: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and the Social Lives of Domestic Cows: to develop the most informed idea of how cows demonstrate intelligence and socioemotional complexity (i.e., how they develop relationships) in ways we humans can recognize.

The Someone Project is a Farm Sanctuary-sponsored research-based initiative documenting farm animal sentience through science. To date, we’ve published four white papers on the lives of domestic cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep, exploring their relationships, emotions, social complexity, and personalities.

Just as we expect people and companion animals to have distinct personalities and individual traits, so do cows. And the complexity of cows’ emotional range makes clear that they have the capacity to lead deeply felt and intricately emotional lives.

As more and more people see cows as someone and not something, it’s so much easier to fully grasp how cruelly they’re exploited (and they are).

For a change of perspective, consider some shareable facts from Thinking Cows: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and the Social Lives of Domestic Cows:

• Cows depend on each other extensively for emotional support. For example, stressed cows will seek out cows who are not stressed, presumably for the calming effect of being with a tranquil friend.
• Cows experience emotions. Cows experience a broad range of emotions––not only basic emotions such as fear and contentment but complex emotions, too. For example, a cow might demonstrate excitement when she figures out that she knows how to perform the task that rewards her with treats. That is––she gets excited not about the treat itself, but over her realization that she can control a situation!

• Cows establish and maintain relationships. When given a chance, cows form a large central community and demonstrate preferences for associating with certain individuals over others.
• Cows have culture. By observing her fellow cows, an individual can pick up on and learn behaviors passed down through generations of cows. This learning method is called “social learning”––and it forms the basis of culture.
• Cows are self-aware. They show excitement and signs of pleasure when they master intellectual challenges, suggesting that cows are self-aware and understand their actions.

• Cows know who you are. They can differentiate between individual humans (even if they’re dressed the same), other cows, and animals of other species. Cows can also discriminate between a wide variety of similar objects––even pictures of objects and individuals.
• Cows have long-term memories. Cows can learn quite complex mazes (i.e., a maze with multiple “arms”) when provided with the opportunity to learn the maze in a step-by-step fashion––and they can remember the maze configuration for up to six weeks.