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The rock group Counting Crows were onto something when they chose their band name. Crows can indeed count, according to research published this week in Science.
The results show that crows have counting capacities near those of human toddlers who are beginning to develop a knack for numbers, says lead study author Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. “We think this is the first time this has been shown for any animal species,” she adds.
Crows do not appear to be capable of symbolic counting, in which numbers are associated with a particular symbol that serves as an exact representation. This skill is still thought to be unique to humans. Instead, the birds are able to count by controlling the number of vocalizations they produce to correspond to associated cues—just like young children who have yet to master symbolic counting often do, Liao says. For example, a toddler who is asked how many apples are on a tree may answer, “One, one, one” or “One, two, three”—producing the number of speech sounds that correspond to the number of objects they see rather than just saying, “Three.”
Scientists have long suspected that some nonhuman species might also have the ability to count by controlling the number of their vocalizations, but they have lacked the smoking gun evidence to prove it. In a study of Black-capped Chickadees, for example, researchers reported that the number of “dee” notes at the ends of the birds’ alarm calls was inversely correlated with the size of the predator they were issuing warnings about. (The small predators in that study posed a higher risk to the chickadees than large ones did.) “They seemed to be conveying the magnitude of the threat,” Liao says.
Yet, this finding on its own did not prove that chickadees were intentionally conveying information about the predator through numbered calls. The behavior could also be driven by the level of fear the birds were experiencing, Liao says, with more dangerous predators triggering higher states of arousal and thus more calls.
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Carrion Crow (Corvus corone). Ernie Janes/Alamy Stock Photo
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