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Health & Science3h 18m ago
Crows can extract probabilistic regularities from experience, store this information in memory, and use it flexibly to make reward-maximizing decisions under uncertainty.
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University of Tübingen in Germany
Who
Andreas Nieder, Kenna Hughes-Castleberry, and carrion crows (Corvus corone)
What
Crows can extract probabilistic regularities from experience, store this information in memory, and use it flexibly to make reward-maximizing decisions under uncertainty.
When
Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:20:27 GMT · 3h 18m ago
Where
University of Tübingen in Germany ·
Why
Nieder's research aims to understand the neuronal foundations of intelligence and cognitive control functions, investigating if sophisticated cognitive abilities are unique to mammals or can emerge in very different brains.
The Frontline Impact
How this affects you
The findings suggest that foundational mathematical abilities may predate humans by a long evolutionary timescale, indicating that human mathematics likely built upon ancient cognitive foundations shared with other species like crows and primates.
Story chain
3 events in this thread- Health & Science3h 18m agoLive Science spoke with animal researcher Andreas Nieder about how animals process mathematical concepts like statistical reasoning and the idea of zero.Open article
- Currently Reading3h 18m agoCrows can extract probabilistic regularities from experience, store this information in memory, and use it flexibly to make reward-maximizing decisions under uncertainty.
- Health & Science3h 18m agoAndreas 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