Friday 30 January 2015

Study Says Chicks Count Like We Do

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Humans are not the only ones to count from left to right. Researchers in Italy found that mental number lines, where numbers rise from the smallest on the left to the largest on the right, come naturally to newborn chicks too.

In experiments at the University of Padua, three-day old chicks were trained to find food behind a panel bearing five bright spots. Then they were confronted with two panels bearing different numbers of spots. When faced with panels that had only two spots, the birds consistently looked behind the left of the two panels. But when faced with eight spots on each panel, they went poking around the righthand panel.

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