Crows can evaluate visual info twice as fast as mammals
Summary
Scientists studied how crows make visual decisions using a test that is often given to monkeys. They found that crows can decide the direction of moving dots twice as fast as monkeys, even though their brains are structured differently.Key Facts
- The test used is called the random-dot-motion task, where subjects decide the direction of moving dots.
- Crows do not have a neocortex like mammals, but use a different brain area called NCL for decision-making.
- Two carrion crows were trained to peck at a screen to show their choice of dot movement direction.
- The crows completed decisions in about 235 milliseconds, while monkeys take about 410 to 600 milliseconds.
- Crows performed the task as accurately as monkeys and humans, with no loss of precision despite being faster.
- Bird brains have a different structure from mammals, with clustered neurons rather than layered sheets.
- This study suggests that the different brain structure in birds allows faster processing in some decision tasks.
- The research was done by Andreas Nieder and Philipp Schmidbauer from the University of Tübingen.
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