Interesting Science

Crows make visual decisions twice as fast as humans

According to a new study from the University of Tübingen, crows make visual decisions twice as fast as humans and monkeys. Two carrion crows took part in the experiments. The birds had to decide whether most of the moving dots were going left or right, and show their answer by pecking the corresponding side of the screen. They needed on average just 235 milliseconds to decide, and with clear signals their accuracy was close to 100 percent. Recordings of neurons in the brain showed that just 70 milliseconds after the dots appeared, neurons linked to different choices already showed different activity. The work of researchers Philipp Schmidbauer and Professor Andreas Nieder has been published in the journal Science. It shows that the bird brain, although built in a completely different way, makes decisions through neural processes similar to those of humans and other primates.

Not covered in Armenian media (checked 14 November)