• NATURE BRIEFING
• 20 January 2026

An Austrian cow named Veronika can use a broom to scratch her body. Plus, Japan is about to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant and an effort to measure the extent of ‘toxic masculinity’.

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• Flora Graham

1. Flora Graham

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Clever cow uses tools for the best scratch

Veronika, a pet cow (Bos taurus) that lives on an Austrian farm, can use a utensil to scratch and groom parts of her body — the first documented instance of tool use in cattle. Over the years, she’s advanced from sticks to implements as large and heavy as brooms, and swaps between using the handle and the bristles to scratch different areas of her body. The use of a single tool for more than one purpose has only been seen before in chimpanzees and humans, says cognitive biologist and study co-author Alice Auersperg.

Science | 6 min read

Reference: Current Biologypaper

Can ‘toxic masculinity’ be measured?

Researchers have attempted to put a number on the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ — the idea that some stereotypically ‘masculine’ traits, such as dominance and aggression, can have damaging social impacts. Researchers defined eight indicators of toxic masculinity and applied them to the results of a large survey in New Zealand. Of more than 15,000 participants that identified as heterosexual males, the smallest group, at just 3.2%, held ‘hostile toxic’ views, such as that women seek to gain control over men and that “inferior groups should stay in their place”. The group was made up mainly of marginalized, disadvantaged men.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: Psychology of Men & Masculinitiespaper

NASA mega-rocket gets ready for the Moon

NASA carefully rolled the most powerful rocket ever built onto its launch pad on Saturday in preparation for a crewed mission around the Moon. The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is almost 100 metres tall and took almost 12 hours to make the 6-kilometre journey from assembly building to launch pad. The SLS is being tested in preparation for the Artemis II mission, which aims to take three US and one Canadian astronaut on the first crewed trip to the vicinity of the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. If all goes well, that will happen sometime after 6 February, in what would be only the second-ever launch of the SLS.

Associated Press | 8 min read or watch a timelapse of the SLS making its 12-hour trip (BBC)

Features & opinion

Japan to restart gigantic nuclear plant

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is getting ready to generate electricity for the first time since 2012, after it was shut down following the 2011 tsunami-triggered meltdown in Fukushima. “The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa restart is a gamble for Japan’s government, which has put an ambitious return to nuclear power generation at the centre of its new energy policy as it struggles to reach its emissions targets and bolster its energy security,” reports The Guardian. But some of the people who live near the world’s biggest nuclear power plant are worried about its safety.

The Guardian | 8 min read

‘Greed is the iron cage of our times’

“Nationalism grows on the terrain of never-satiated mass plenty and greed,” writes economist Branko Milanovic in his new book, The Great Global Transformation. Milanovic argues that globalization benefited previously poor populations, notably those in China, and the already rich, but left the middle and lower classes in countries such as the United States behind. The result is “the exponential growth of ‘nationalism, greed and property’”, writes sociologist Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz in his review. “For Milanovic, greed is the iron cage of our times, and our future is bleak.”

Nature | 7 min read

The human cost of the ‘head activator’

The hydra — a tiny, jellyfish-like creature — gets its name from the fact that if you decapitate it, its head will grow back. In the early 1970s, a graduate student published a blockbuster finding on the basis of gruelling lab work: a molecule, known as the ‘head activator’, that drives the animal’s regeneration. But attempts at replication failed, kicking off a scientific battle that destroyed careers and hounded both sides to their graves.

Asimov Press | 37 min read

Where I work

Last year, physical oceanography PhD student Melina Martinez spent 27 days aboard a research vessel to explore the Malvinas Current, a nutrient-rich ocean current that runs alongside Argentina. “It’s a huge responsibility to monitor it, not only to understand how global ocean circulation is changing, but also to understand more local processes, such as how the current affects regional fisheries and the hotspot of chlorophyll off Argentina’s coast,” she says. (Nature | 3 min read)

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Thanks for reading,

Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Jacob Smith

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