Scientists Suggest a New Layer to Crows' Cognitive Complexity

The birds may be able to grasp a pattern-forming concept once thought to be unique to humans

Will Sullivan

November 14, 2022



Previous research has demonstrated that crows can make tools and recognize faces. Getty Images

Time and again, it seems, research has revealed crows performing some cognitive task that defies our expectations. Now, a new paper claims the birds can understand a certain kind of pattern, displaying an ability that scientists once thought was unique to humans.

Researchers tested whether crows can grasp the concept of recursion, which they define as “the process of embedding structures within similar structures” in their paper published in November in Science Advances.

Humans use recursion in language when we embed one clause within another to form a complex sentence, writes Scientific American’s Diana Kwon. For example, if a human says, “The ball the bat hit flew,” they’ve nested the clause “the bat hit” inside of “the ball flew.”

Scientists have long wondered whether understanding these patterns is unique to humans. “There’s always been interest in whether or not nonhuman animals can also grasp recursive sequences,” Diana Liao, the study's lead author who studies bird cognition at the University of Tübingen in Germany, tells Scientific American. In the early 2000s, linguists hypothesized that human language is the only form of animal communication that uses recursion, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Dominique Mosbergen.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-suggest-a-new-layer-to-crows-cognitive-complexity-180981071/