Research suggests chicks can count.

According to recently published research, humans may not have a monopoly on the ability to count. Scientists think chicks may also have a sense of numbers.

Their experiments suggest that chicks count upward, putting smaller numbers on the left, and larger ones on the right. Humans use the same visualization of a number line when they count.

“Our results suggest a rethinking of the relationship between numerical abilities and verbal language, providing further evidence that language and culture are not necessary for the development of a mathematical cognition,” said study lead author and University of Padova psychologist Rosa Rugani.

Scientists are unclear about why people think of ascending numbers from left to right. They are hoping their new research, published in the journal, Science, will reveal whether that way of thinking is learned or hardwired in the brain.

Rugani and her team began their experiments by training 3-day-old chicks to go behind a screen panel displaying five dots in order to get a treat. This made the number five a baseline the chicks could compare other numbers to.

Once the chicks associated the five-dot panel with food, researchers removed it and placed them before two panels, one to the left and the other to the right. Each of them had two dots. The chicks tended toward left panel, suggesting that they mentally represent numbers smaller than five as being to its left.

When the chicks were put in front of two panels with eight dots each, they walked to the right panel. This suggests the chicks mentally represent numbers larger than five as being to its right, researchers said.

The experiment was repeated using a panel with 20 dots. The chicks were placed before panels that had either eight or 32 dots. The baby chicks tended to go to the left when the screens had just eight dots, and to the right when they had 32 dots.

“I would not at all be surprised that the number spatial mapping is also found in other animals, and in newborn infants,” Rugani said.

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