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by mewpmewp2 905 days ago
When you are talking about "counting", do you mean the logical process of going "one", "two", "three"... or do you mean the ability to statistically estimate the amount of quantity by the amount of signal you are processing?

E.g. are pigeons actually "counting" as in the process how humans calculate to be accurate? Or are they just responding to the signal? Like similar to how a person could tell whether some sound is higher or lower pitch, but they wouldn't be able to actually numerically say the actual exact frequency.

Because to me pigeons are just similarly responding to the amount of "signal" they are receiving, not actually doing abstract reasoning.

And looking at the science studies, it also seems that they had to train pigeons to be able to count, they weren't able to do it out of the box.