No, I'm not making a lame joke about the band Counting Crows. As it turns out, crows can recognize symbols used as numbers.
There were only eight crows involved, so it's not really conclusive, but it's still interesting.
Link Via BoingBoing
Image Via malfet [Flickr]
A new study suggests that crows can recognize symbols that represent quantities of items. At Japan's Utsunomiya University, crows were shown two containers. Only the container marked with five symbols contained the food. The researchers trained the crows to identify the food container 70% of the time.
There were only eight crows involved, so it's not really conclusive, but it's still interesting.
Link Via BoingBoing
Image Via malfet [Flickr]
I can't find the exact link with the methodology as I remember it, but here's one link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/01/chicks-mathematics-arithmetic-sums
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29