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RT @MollFW: New preprint:. The crow's "song system" appears to parallel the avian "general motor system" proposed by Farries (2001). Check….

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Symbolic counting is the culmination of complex processes learned by children over many years which elaborates on non-symbolic competencies we share w/ nonhuman animals. We show that crows have the capability to ‘count’ vocally as an evolutionary precursor to symbolic counting.

3) Acoustic features (e.g. duration, entropy, pitch) of the first vox can predict the number of upcoming vox. Acoustic features can also predict where in the sequence a particular vocalization is. This supports planning and also keeping 'track' during production.

2) The crow's reaction time (RT) is longer than subsequent inter-call-intervals & RT scales with the number of vocs. The higher the #, the longer it takes before the crows starts to vocalize. This suggest that they might plan their vocalizations before production.

We find that 1) their performance shows signatures of the approximate # system: evolutionarily ancient & found across animal species & in children before formal math schooling. For example, there's the numerical distance effect (it's easier to confuse 3 & 4 as opposed to 1 & 4).

We complement field studies by bringing this into the lab & training crows to produce 1-4 vocs to arbitrary, non-arousing visual & auditory cues. Crows see or hear a cue (colored numeral, short sound), call that # of times, & peck the screen when done. If correct, they get 🪱.

Could nonhuman animals also control the # of vocs? Chickadees scale the number of 'dee' notes in alarm calls to predator wingspan, signalling magnitude of threat. They could do this volitionally or they could be driven by arousal. More danger 🦉 = higher arousal 💓= more calls 🎶.

Why is ‘count’ in quotes? We were inspired by children learning to count. Before they learn an exact symbolic representation for each number, they instead use # words as vocal tallies. When asked, how many apples? They say ’one two three’ or ‘one one one’ instead of 'three'.

Our paper, Crows ‘count’ the number of self-generated vocalizations, is out! With this amazing team (@KatharinaBrecht, @lena_veit, A_Nieder), we uncovered that crows are able to control the number of vocalizations produced.

RT @MollFW: Out now! Take a deep dive into the connections of the crow brain NCL (the "avian prefrontal cortex"). This research lays an ana….