Crows can count in a way similar to toddlers: Study

The study was inspired by toddlers learning to count.

by Urja Sinha | May. 29, 2024

FILE – Crows fly in front of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, on Feb. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

Story at a glance

Neuroscientist Diana Liao and her team of researchers at the University of Tübingen’s animal physiology lab in Germany, said crows can count up to four.

According to the researchers, the way the birds recognize and react to numbers is similar to the process humans use, both to learn to count as toddlers and quickly recognize how many objects we’re looking at.

“Humans do not have a monopoly on skills such as numerical thinking, abstraction, tool manufacture, and planning ahead,” animal cognition expert Heather Williams said.

(NewsNation) — Crows may be smarter than we give them credit for, according to a new study that indicates they have the ability to count out loud in a way similar to humans.

Neuroscientist Diana Liao and her team of researchers at the University of Tübingen’s animal physiology lab in Germany, provided the new insight into the often-overlooked bird, saying crows can count up to four.

“We show that crows can flexibly produce variable numbers of one to four vocalizations in response to arbitrary cues associated with numerical values,” Liao says. What this means about the crows’ ability to understand what they are saying remains unknown.

According to the researchers, the way the birds recognize and react to numbers is similar to the process humans use, both to learn to count as toddlers and quickly recognize how many objects we’re looking at.

“Humans do not have a monopoly on skills such as numerical thinking, abstraction, tool manufacture, and planning ahead,” animal cognition expert Heather Williams told CNN. “No one should be surprised that crows are ‘smart.’” Williams, a professor of biology at Williams College in Massachusetts, was not involved in the study.

Liao says the study was inspired by toddlers learning to count. Over the course of the research, Liao and her team trained three carrion crows, a European species closely related to the American crow, over more than 160 sessions.

During the training, the birds had to learn associations between a series of visual and auditory cues from one to four and produce the corresponding number of caws. In the example researchers provided, a visual cue might look like a bright blue numeral, and its corresponding audio could be the half-second song of a drumroll.