Ducklings are much smarter than you think, study finds

Humans might not be such standout thinkers after all. At this stage, the ducklings imprinted on the pairs of moving objects that were presented to them. And that could disrupt what we think about thought.

Ducklings are probably more intelligent than you would expect.

Antone Martinho, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, was curious about whether these little fuzzy babies learned and remembered their mother using a simple visual memory or whether imprinting was representative of more complex cognitive abilities.

The study indicates that ducklings are capable of learning the relationship between objects, and that applies to more than just the characteristics of the object themselves, according to a University of Oxford statement.

A duckling approaches a stimulus pair composed of different shapes. All the objects were red.

The ducklings showed that they understood the concepts of “same” and “different”, since they elected to follow objects that matched one of these two relationships, depending on what they had imprinted on earlier, even though the baby birds had never before seen these newer sets of particular items and colors.

Scientists hypothesized that a duckling who was imprinted with an identical pair of objects would prefer a pair that exhibits the concept of sameness. For example, if a duckling had originally been exposed to a pair of spherical objects, in the choice test it may have been given the options of following a pair of pyramids (same) or a pair made up of one cone and one cylinder (different). Their ability to identify same colors or shapes were both equally accurate. Ducklings that had been primed with objects of the same color opted to follow a different one-color pair later in the experiment; those that had been primed to recognize a pair with two colors did the same.

The study showed that the ducklings were able to recognise the “same” or “different” relationship between object pairs. The majority of ducklings followed the same shaped objects in the test if the ducklings learned to follow same shaped objects during training. “We were shocked not only that they did it, but also that they did it with such accuracy”.

Ducklings might know the difference between the abstract concepts “same” and “different”, according to a study published on Friday by the University of Oxford.

Imprinting may seem primitive, but it is actually a complicated skill that the bird develops quite soon after it hatches and begins waddling around, said lead author Alex Kacelnik of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. Instead, she says, perhaps the ducks could be imprinting on more or less variability in the pair as an overall configuration, or one unit.

It is true even when that object isn’t really a duck.

“I think it is interesting that it is there in these very young animals”, he said.

Ducks aren’t the only animals studied by researchers looking for evidence of such concept learning.

This ability had previously only been observed in animals like crows, apes and parrots, which are considered to be more intelligent.

“Our one project can’t say whether it is ancestral or convergent”, Martinho says, “but it certainly does reinforce the usefulness of this ability”. “Although animals may not be able to speak, studying their behavior may be a suitable substitute for assaying their thoughts, and this in turn may allow us to jettison the stale canard that thought without language is impossible”.

While the brain’s ability to deal with abstract properties – including patterns of “same” and “different” – has been demonstrated in animals with advanced intelligence after extensive training, researchers now show that newly hatched ducklings can distinguish same and different, too, without any training at all.