In a Tübingen laboratory, two carrion crows watched drifting dots and pecked toward the side they judged the swarm to be moving, doing so in about 235 milliseconds, roughly twice the pace of humans and monkeys on similar tasks. It is a small chapter, drawn from only two birds, yet it reminds us that minds built on very different architectures can arrive at the same kind of judgment, and that the old human assumption of a single correct tempo for seeing and deciding may be narrower than we thought. How the crows achieve such speed with brains lacking a layered cortex remains an open question, w
Crows Make Visual Decisions Twice as Fast as Humans and Monkeys, Study Finds
Different brains, the same decision logic, and the crows got there twice as fast
Mark
Start with the number. 235 milliseconds. What are we actually comparing?
Mimi
The time it took two carrion crows to judge whether most moving dots were going left or right and peck the matching side. The researchers say that's about twice as fast as humans and monkeys on this kind of task.
Luke
Two crows, though. That's worth saying plainly. The result is striking, but it comes from a very small sample.
Mimi
Fair. The report doesn't claim it applies to every crow, or every bird. It describes what these two did, along with the neural recordings.
Mark
And the brain recordings? What did they add?
Mimi
They showed that 70 milliseconds after the dots appeared, neurons in a region called the nidopallium caudolaterale were already separating the two choices. That's well before the bird responded.
Luke
Worth noting that region is described as playing a role like the prefrontal cortex. That's an analogy, not an identical structure.
Mark
So why does it matter that the brains are built differently?
Mimi
Birds don't have a layered cerebral cortex, yet the neural activity fits established decision models from primates. Evidence builds up until it hits a threshold.
Luke
And the why of the speed? The evolutionary explanation about flight and beak guidance is the researchers' suggestion. The actual mechanism is unknown.
Mimi
Yes, they say further studies are needed to explain how a differently organized brain gets there faster.
The Pulse
- Two crows raced against the clock, sorting drifting dots left or right in under a quarter of a second.
- Their brains began committing to a choice roughly 70 milliseconds after the dots appeared, far earlier than anyone expected for such a judgment.
- Researchers in Tübingen are tracing neuron by neuron how the signal climbs toward a decision threshold, testing whether bird brains follow primate blueprints.
- The speed is striking, but the sample is only two birds, so the field is holding its enthusiasm while the mechanism remains unexplained.
In a Tübingen laboratory, two carrion crows watched drifting dots and pecked toward the side they judged the swarm to be moving, doing so in about 235 milliseconds, roughly twice the pace of humans and monkeys on similar tasks. It is a small chapter, drawn from only two birds, yet it reminds us that minds built on very different architectures can arrive at the same kind of judgment, and that the old human assumption of a single correct tempo for seeing and deciding may be narrower than we thought. How the crows achieve such speed with brains lacking a layered cortex remains an open question, waiting for the next patient experiment.
Two carrion crows sat before a touchscreen in a laboratory at the University of Tübingen, watching a field of dots drift. Their task was simple: decide whether most of the dots were moving left or right, then peck the matching target. On average, they made the call in 235 milliseconds, about twice as fast as humans and monkeys manage on comparable visual decisions.
The study, published in Science, comes from Philipp Schmidbauer and Professor Andreas Nieder. Speed did not cost accuracy. When the motion was clear, the crows were nearly flawless, and when it was murky, they still did better than chance.
Inside the birds' brains, the researchers recorded individual neurons in a region that plays a role similar to the human prefrontal cortex. Within 70 milliseconds, cells linked to each possible choice were already firing in distinct patterns, climbing steadily toward a threshold for committing to an answer. Nieder finds the dynamics consistent with models of decision-making in primates, even though birds lack a layered cerebral cortex. The researchers suggest the speed may reflect the demands of flight and foraging, where slow visual judgments would be costly.
What remains unknown is how the crows achieve this. Further studies will be needed to explain a differently built brain that reaches comparable visual decisions so much faster.
Two carrion crows sat in front of a touchscreen in a laboratory at the University of Tübingen, watching a field of moving dots. Their job was to decide whether most of the dots were drifting left or right, then peck a target on the matching side of the screen. On average, it took them 235 milliseconds to make the call.
That figure is the headline of a study published in the journal Science, and it is roughly twice as fast as humans and monkeys manage on comparable visual decisions. The work comes from Philipp Schmidbauer and Professor Andreas Nieder of the university's Institute of Neurobiology. Only two birds took part, a small sample that is worth keeping in view.
Speed did not come at the expense of accuracy. When the dots gave a clear signal about direction, Schmidbauer reports, the crows reached nearly 100 percent accuracy. When the motion was hard to read, their choices were still better than random guessing.
The researchers also looked inside the birds' brains while they worked, recording the activity of individual neurons. They focused on a region called the nidopallium caudolaterale, which plays a role in processing information and making decisions, much as the prefrontal cortex does in humans.
The recordings showed the decision process starting almost at once. Just 70 milliseconds after the dots appeared, neurons tied to the two possible choices were already firing in distinct patterns, well before the bird moved to peck. As the crows weighed the dots, activity climbed steadily until it reached a threshold associated with committing to an answer. The signal tracked both how clearly the dots pointed in one direction and which direction the bird ultimately chose.
That pattern is what interests Nieder most. He says the neuronal dynamics in the avian brain are consistent with established models of decision-making in humans and non-human primates. Yet bird brains are built differently: unlike mammals, birds lack a cerebral cortex organized into layers. The same basic principles of gathering evidence and reaching a verdict seem to operate anyway, on a different architecture, and in this task the crows finished the process twice as fast as primates.
The researchers suggest the speed may reflect evolutionary demands. Nieder explains that birds rely on vision for precise, rapid maneuvers in flight and to guide their beaks toward objects while foraging, both situations in which slow visual judgments would be costly.
What the study does not yet explain is how the crows do it. The biological mechanisms behind their speed advantage remain unknown, and further studies will be needed to work out how a differently structured brain reaches comparable visual decisions so much faster than human and monkey brains do.
Notable Quotes
The findings show that neuronal dynamics in the avian brain are consistent with established models of decision-making in humans and non-human primates.— Andreas Nieder, University of Tübingen
With clear signals, the crows achieved an accuracy of nearly 100 percent.— Philipp Schmidbauer, University of Tübingen
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