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Image depicting Crows are way smarter than we think!

Crows are way smarter than we think!

Recommended for Middle Grades

Scientists have found that crows can understand recursion or repetition. This is a difficult way of thinking about how things work.

Crows are well-known for being smart. They can use tools, understand the number zero, and make simple comparisons.

What is recursion?

In computer science, recursion is a way to solve a problem where the answer depends on the answers to smaller problems that are similar to the main problem.

A new study shows crows grasp a challenging mental idea like toddlers. Researchers found that crows use recursion or repetition to find hidden pairs.

Think about this sentence: “The cat that the dog was chasing meowed.” Most adults can quickly figure out that the cat meowed and that the dog was chasing it.

At first, people thought that humans were the only ones who could match parts of a sentence or any sequence, like “cat” to “meow” and “dog” to “chase.” The results of a recent study, on the other hand, show that crows can also do this.

Key facts!

  • According to the study’s lead author, “Recursion is not limited to merely occurring in the context of grammar.”
  • Our ears are able to identify a musical phrase that is embedded within a bigger piece.
  • And our minds are able to set aside a mathematical formula that is contained behind parenthesis.
  • The study taught crows to recognise the symbols, [] and >.
  • They rewarded the crows with treats only when the birds pecked in the order of a repeated sequence.
  • The birds had spent about a week learning to peck the symbols in order.
  • Thereafter the crows were given their final exams, which consisted of strings of similar symbols they had not yet seen, such as [ ].
  • Their performance on these kinds of tests was comparable to what is normally expected of preschoolers.
  • This finding lends credence to the hypothesis that the capacity to recognise recursive sequences may have initially been developed for other purposes.

Meet Klaus, the super smart crow, shared by Youtube user “Dodo Kids”

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