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Health & Science4h 37m ago

Live Science spoke with animal researcher Andreas Nieder about how animals process mathematical concepts like statistical reasoning and the idea of zero.

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Germany

Who
Andreas Nieder, Kenna Hughes-Castleberry
What
Live Science spoke with animal researcher Andreas Nieder about how animals process mathematical concepts like statistical reasoning and the idea of zero.
When
Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:20:27 GMT · 4h 37m ago
Where
Germany ·
Why
Studies of crows, monkeys and other animals suggest that the cognitive building blocks of math may have evolved hundreds of millions of years before people began doing calculations.
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Research into the numerical abilities of crows and other animals suggests that the foundations of mathematics may predate humans by a long evolutionary timescale, indicating that humans inherited ancient cognitive systems for numerical estimation and comparison.

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3 events in this thread
  1. Currently Reading4h 37m ago
    Live Science spoke with animal researcher Andreas Nieder about how animals process mathematical concepts like statistical reasoning and the idea of zero.
  2. Health & Science4h 37m ago
    Crows can extract probabilistic regularities from experience, store this information in memory, and use it flexibly to make reward-maximizing decisions under uncertainty.
    Open article
  3. Health & Science4h 37m ago
    Andreas Nieder, a professor of animal physiology, found evidence that crows and monkeys process numerical information in similar ways, suggesting the cognitive building blocks of math may have evolved hundreds of millions of years before humans.
    Open article

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