Numerosity representations in crows obey the Weber-Fechner Law

The ability to estimate number is widespread throughout the animal kingdom. Based on the relative close phylogenetic relationship and thus equivalent brain structures, nonverbal numerical representations in human and nonhuman primates show almost identical behavioural signatures that obey the Weber-Fechner Law. However, whether numerosity discriminations of vertebrates with a very different endbrain organization show the same behavioural signatures remains unknown. Therefore, we tested the numerical discrimination performance of two carrion crows (Corvus corone) to a broad range of numerosities from 1 to 30 in a delayed match-to-sample task similar to the one used previously with primates. The crows’ discrimination was based on an analogue magnitude system and showed the Weber-fraction signature, i.e. the ‘just noticeable difference’ between numerosity pairs increased in proportion to the numerical magnitudes. The detailed analysis of the performance indicates that numerosity representa...