Numb3rs

- blue jay in my yard

From Scientific American, a podcast for the human exceptionalists out there :) .... Pigeons Can Follow Abstract Number Counting Rules

As a NYT story states ...

By now, the intelligence of birds is well known. Alex the African gray parrot had great verbal skills. Scrub jays, which hide caches of seeds and other food, have remarkable memories. And New Caledonian crows make and use tools in ways that would put the average home plumber to shame. Pigeons, it turns out, are no slouches either. It was known that they could count. But all sorts of animals, including bees, can count. Pigeons have now shown that they can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability which until now had been demonstrated only in primates.