They are the calculating birds.
Crows are amazingly intelligent creatures. Researchers have already known that they have a primary, sensory consciousness. Only humans and primates are capable of combining memories to think in past and present.
in a recently published study ( The Journal of Neuroscience ), scientists claim that these birds are also able to interpret the mathematical concept of zero.
Zero is a relatively new mathematical concept, not all of the ancient number systems knew it. Therefore, the ability of crows is even more remarkable.
During the experiments at the University of Tübingen, Germany, they used the fact that crows have certain neurons that light up when they see a certain amount. The number one activates a certain neuron, two activates another, three activates yet another, and so on. In other words, they already knew that birds can distinguish between these quantities.
Since birds do not have a cerebral cortex like humans or apes, this raises new questions about their intelligence.
In the study, the researchers showed the birds dots on a screen: 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 dots. The birds had to recognize two items containing the same amount of shapes, while their brain activity was monitored. When zero appeared on the display, a new nerve cell fired in the birds, i.e. they recognized the new quantity for them.
Sometimes the crows made a mistake, they thought two items were the same. However, for zero, this error was much more between zero and one than between zero and other numbers. According to scientists, this is only possible if the crows understand that zero is the lowest numerical quantity, one less than one.
Source: mymodernmet.com
Featured Image: Pixabay
