Study Finds Crows To Be Capable of Recursion — A Cognitive Ability Thought To Be Unique To Humans And Other Primates

Crows are some of the smartest creatures in the animal kingdom. According to a new study, crows possess the cognitive ability for one of the linguistic elements that make human language so complex. The insult 'birdbrain' probably stems from the misconception that birds possess little to no intelligence since they have very tiny, nut-sized brains. But this age-old analogy couldn't be further from the truth, considering how savvy these creatures have proven themselves to be.

Researchers from the University of Tübingen have studied crows using the same method as their colleagues used in the previous Wisconsin study with monkeys. In this one, the animals had to find a pair of symbols in a sentence of symbols, so they had to find out, for example, where in the <()> symbol sequence the pair of brackets was located. When they did, the researchers created longer and longer sentences to see if the test subjects would still pick out the embedded ones. As with the rhesus monkeys, the subjects could pick out the embedded characters in 40% of trials, but without the extra training that the monkeys received! So, recursive capabilities are not limited to the primate genealogy, as it turns out. Which also helps reiterate just how smart crows are.