Pigeons rival macaques in numerical ability

Understanding ab­stract con­cepts like nu­mer­i­cal rules is an abil­ity hu­mans gen­er­ally like to claim for themselves or to our clos­est ev­o­lu­tion­ary rel­a­tives. But sci­en­tists say it’s be­com­ing in­creas­ingly clear that this view underestimates the abil­i­ties of many other ani­mals. Birds in par­tic­u­lar have been found to share a number of abilities once thought un­ique to hu­mans, apes and mon­keys—including tool crea­t­ion, tool use and memory for specific events.