Pigeons can count and order numbers as effectively as primates.

A landmark study published in the journal Science in 2011 by researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand demonstrated these abilities. Led by Dr. Damian Scarf, the team trained pigeons to peck at three sets of images containing one, two, and three objects in ascending order. The images varied in color, shape, and size to ensure the birds were focusing specifically on the number of items rather than visual patterns.Once the pigeons mastered the sequence 1-2-3, they were tested with pairs of numbers they had never seen before, ranging from one to nine. Remarkably, the pigeons consistently pecked the smaller number first and then the larger one, showing they understood the ordinal relationship between the quantities. This performance mirrored the results of similar tests conducted on rhesus monkeys in 1998, suggesting a shared evolutionary trait or convergent evolution in numerical cognition.This discovery challenged the long-held belief that complex mathematical reasoning was exclusive to the primate brain. While birds lack a prefrontal cortex, they utilize a brain region called the nidopallium caudolaterale to process numerical information. This research highlights that despite having much smaller brains, avian species can perform high-level cognitive tasks that were once thought to be a hallmark of human intelligence.