Crows can count out loud like human toddlers — when they aren't cheating the test

These findings could shed light on the behavior of other birds in the wild, says Chris Templeton, a biologist at Western Washington University who wasn't involved in the research. "Maybe these crows are able to really intentionally produce vocalizations, and they have this idea of what their vocalizations mean," he explains.

In a natural setting, he says, this combination of intention and meaning might allow an animal to communicate something specific to other individuals of their own or a different species. In previous work, Templeton found that the more dangerous a predator is, the more "dee" sections a chickadee produces in its calls. Perhaps the more scared a bird is, the longer its calls are. But this latest research suggests to him the possibility that perhaps the chickadees are intentionally adding more "dee" sections to signal something to their neighbors about the level of danger in the environment.