To be fair, I plan in advance not to make any calls because I don’t like talking on the phone anyway…

Damn, this is actually kinda huge. Until now, humans were the only animals that have an undisputed, widely accepted and scientifically supported ability to count. However, the evidence they’ve laid out makes it seem obvious that crows can count.

It’s one thing for an animal to consistently make the right number of noises in response to a stimulus, it’s another thing for them to actually modulate their first call to indicate the number of calls that will follow. Then, the fact that they seem to occasionally miscount (use a first call that corresponds to the correct number but calling an incorrect number of times) would appear to further support this conclusion.

That’s actually kinda amazing. If the research successfully goes through peer review and gets reproduced in independent labs then I imagine it’d set a new standard or become a guide for determining whether or not an animal can count.

In a behavioral experiment, crows were able to learn to produce a set number of calls. This involves them planning in advance.

Crows are better than humans in yet another way.

I read that as cells for far too long. But this is cool too.