Crows Have a Hidden Talent: They Understand Geometry Like We Do

A fascinating new study shows that crows possess a keen sense of geometric intuition—similar to humans. They can spot the "odd one out" in a set of shapes and even prefer symmetrical, regular forms (like squares) over irregular ones (like lopsided rhombuses).

Why This Matters:

• Crows are the first non-human animals known to demonstrate this ability.

• This suggests that recognizing geometric patterns may be an ancient evolutionary trait, possibly shared across species.

How the Study Worked:
Researchers at the University of Tübingen trained two carrion crows to identify a mismatched shape among five identical ones on a screen. The crows pecked at the outlier—no prior training needed for quadrilaterals!

Key Findings:
✔ Crows excelled at detecting intruders among regular shapes (like squares and rectangles).
✔ Irregular shapes (like wonky quadrilaterals) were much harder for them.
✔ Their performance mirrored human intuition—even struggling most with rhombuses, just like us!

What It Means:
This ability likely helps crows navigate their environment, suggesting that basic geometric understanding is deeply rooted in biology. As researcher Andreas Nieder puts it: "The very foundation of geometry, from a visual standpoint, seems to be an evolutionary trait."

Final Thought:
Yet another reason to admire crows—their brains are sharper than we ever imagined! 🧠🐦

Reference:

Philipp Schmidbauer https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2936-226X, Madita Hahn, and Andreas Nieder "crows recognize geometric regularity" Science advances, 11,15, 2025