Crows can 'count' similarly to toddlers, according to new study

Before toddlers learn to master symbolic counting–where “one” stands for a single object and “two” indicates double that–they pass through a developmental stage of verbal tallying. In this phase, asked how many apples are in a group of three, a young child might say “one, one, one” or “one, two, three” or “apple, apple, apple,” in a form of proto-counting. They understand there are three apples, but they don’t quite yet have the ability to express that number in the abstract form of “three,” alone.