Chicks Think Like Humans: Here's Why

Baby chicks are yellow, fluffy and down-right adorable. However, most humans probably aren't thinking they have anything in common with modern-day Homo sapiens. Turns out that these adorable creatures map out small numbers on the left side and bigger numbers on the right side, just like us. The intelligence trait, otherwise known as mental number line, can be seen in infants as young as seven months old.

"The predisposition to map numbers onto space appears to be embedded in the architecture of the animal brain," said Rosa Rugani, a psychologist at the University of Padova in Italy, via American Live Wire. "They appear to originate in biology and not through language or culture.

"We tested chicks just three days old, so we cannot say the spatial numerical association is innate or inborn, but it is precociously available soon after birth. I would not be surprise if we find similar spatial mapping in other animals and newborn infants."

Rugani and other researchers said they believe that this phenomenon could potentially originate in the hemispherical asymmetry of the brain. Furthermore, the research suggests that this tendency to map out numbers from left to right actually originated millions of years prior to the number concept that involved individuals with right-hemisphere damages, resulting in the hardwired concept of counting as opposed to language.

"We have brains that evolved for fighting and finding food, not for doing calculus," added Tyler Marghetis, from the University of California, San Diego, who has conducted a study on the spatial association of numbers, via The New York Times. "So one of the hopes of this kind of research is that it will tell us something about the basic building blocks we have access to in building up these more human concepts."

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal Science.

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