Crows decide motion direction in 235 ms, Tübingen study

Researchers at the University of Tübingen measured how fast two crows, Iggy and Lemmy, decide on the direction of moving dots. According to Catraca Livre, which covered the study published in Science on 22 October 2026, the mean decision time was 235 milliseconds, about twice as fast as in comparisons with primates on similar tasks catracalivre.com.br. The birds were trained by Philipp Schmidbauer and Andreas Nieder catracalivre.com.br.

Task design with moving dots

The crows viewed dot patterns on a touchscreen. Some dots moved in a predominant direction, while others moved without a useful pattern. The bird had to choose the correct direction, left or right, and received a larva as a reward catracalivre.com.br. Varying the share of coherent dots changed the difficulty while the rule of the task stayed the same catracalivre.com.br.

The task did not require recognizing a familiar object, so the birds had to extract a statistical trend from the whole set of dots. The data came from thousands of trials. The analysis measured the time between stimulus and response, and the accuracy of choices was part of the interpretation, since a fast guess would have little value catracalivre.com.br.

Neural signals and limits of the result

Recordings of neuronal activity showed signals linked to the decision about 70 milliseconds after stimulus onset catracalivre.com.br. Electrodes registered the activity of specific cells during the task, and the team related these patterns to correct choices. This is a correlation of activity with behavior, not a full explanation of what the brain does catracalivre.com.br.

The 235 ms figure is an average across the two individuals; times vary between trials and difficulty levels. The comparison with humans and other primates relies on earlier work and depends on similar test conditions and differences in method catracalivre.com.br.

Two birds allow a detailed analysis of their own performance and neural signals, but not the claim that all crows would respond equally fast. Small samples are common in invasive neurophysiology, and generalization requires replication with other individuals, species and protocols. Birds trained over many sessions may also develop strategies that differ from those of birds without experience with screens catracalivre.com.br. The study did not test language, autobiographical memory or planning catracalivre.com.br.

Tübingen: two crows judged dot motion direction in 235 ms, about twice as fast as primates in similar tasks

Task design with moving dots

Neural signals and limits of the result

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