Crows make decisions twice as fast as humans, study finds

Researchers at the University of Tübingen found that two carrion crows distinguished the direction of moving dots on a screen in an average of 235 milliseconds — roughly twice as fast as humans and monkeys on comparable tasks. Activity in 248 neurons of the NCL predicted the birds' choice as early as 70 ms after the stimulus appeared.

• Crows solved the task in 235 ms, about half the time of humans and monkeys
• With only 3% of dots moving together, the birds still answered correctly 50% of the time
• NCL neurons predicted the choice 70 ms after the stimulus appeared
• Finding suggests sophisticated computation does not require a mammalian cortex