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

Germany

Who

Andreas Nieder, Kenna Hughes-Castleberry

What

When

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:20:27 GMT · 2h 2m 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.

The Frontline Impact

How this affects you

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

Currently Reading2h 2m ago
Live Science spoke with animal researcher Andreas Nieder about how animals process mathematical concepts like statistical reasoning and the idea of zero.
Health & Science2h 2m 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
Health & Science2h 2m 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

Verified Sources & Citations

Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/they-reliably-chose-the-statistically-more-favorable-option-a-crow-researcher-explains-how-these-winged-geniuses-process-numbers-and-what-it-could-reveal-about-human-math-smarts
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