What someone else wrote: A very good explanation about how evolution works.

Will cows evolve to be intelligent like humans?

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Whales are close relatives of cows and hippos. Yet toothed whales (i.e. dolphins) are smarter than chimps, our closest living relatives. The dolphins are the next smartest living things on earth besides humans. In fact, before humans evolved, dolphins were the smartest animals that ever lived. Therefore it is certainly possible that the descendants of cows can evolve to be very smart, perhaps not as smart as humans but very smart nevertheless.

If it is possible, then is it probable that cows can give rise to descendants that are very smart. The answer is may be. The reason humans evolved to be so smart is because without our brains, we probably would have become extinct. That is because our ape ancestors were forced to live on the African savanna by stronger apes, when African forests started to shrink due to climate change. To survive on the savanna, where there are lots of dangerous predators but little food, our ancestors needed to evolve traits such as walking on 2 legs, and they have to evolve almond shaped eyes so they can have better peripheral vision than apes. They also needed big brains to figure out where to find food. With our big brains, we have found food that apes do not eat. For example, humans have learned to dig clams during low tide. We learned to dig tubers such as yam and potato out from below the ground. We even eventually learned to grow our own crops. The big brain comes at a cost, however, because it requires a lot of energy to maintain. Our brain weighs less than 3 pounds and yet it consumes 20% of our daily energy. As a result humans have to eat a lot and an energy rich diet just to stay alive. Cows feed mainly on grasses, which have very little calories. in fact it is because we cannot digest grasses which forced us to evolve a big brain to find food. In contrast cows evolved a 4 chambered stomach to eat digest grasses so they did not need a big brain to survive. Different solutions for the same problem by different organisms. That is common in evolution.

In evolution, good enough is good enough. The relatively low intelligence of cows is good enough for them. If they need a big brain to survive, they either evolve one or they become extinct. So, unless there is a real good reason for them to evolve a big brain, chances are that they won't, because it does not do them any good to have a brain that is more costly to maintain but that does not help them survive better. It will force them to eat a lot more in order to maintain a useless organ that consumes a lot of energy. To give you a sociological example, it is like putting a bus sized engine in a small car so that it will consume a lot of gasoline even though it won't get you from point a to point b any faster nor can it transport the same number of passengers as a bus. That is why humans do not put bus sized engines in small cars. It is just wasteful without doing us any good.