In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers have found that crows possess the remarkable ability to count using vocalizations. A study published in the journal Science revealed that carrion crows can flexibly produce variable numbers of one to four caws in response to arbitrary cues associated with numerical values.
This finding challenges previous notions of animal cognition and suggests that crows have a more sophisticated understanding of numbers than once believed. The crows’ counting skills resemble those of human toddlers, who often count based on vocalizations before learning cardinal number words.
The study, led by neurobiologist Diana Liao from the University of Tübingen, trained three carrion crows to associate visual and auditory cues with numbers from 1 to 4 and produce the corresponding number of caws. The researchers observed that the crows took longer to react as the cues continued, suggesting they planned the number of caws before vocalizing. Subtle acoustic differences in the first call indicated the crows knew how many numbers they were looking at and had synthesized the information.
Remarkably, the crows’ errors were similar to those made by humans, typically between closely related numbers like three and four, rather than between numbers with a larger difference, such as one and four. These findings provide evidence that crows can understand abstract numbers, plan their behavior accordingly, and produce a controlled vocal response, a necessary precursor for language development.
The discovery of crows’ ability to count using vocalizations challenges the notion that humans have a monopoly on skills such as numerical thinking, abstraction, and planning ahead. It adds to the growing body of evidence that animals are not merely stimulus-response machines but rather complex beings capable of advanced cognitive abilities.
