New research suggests chicks can count numbers just like us.

A series of experiments revealed three-day-old chicks have mental "number lines". Their lines go left to right or from low numerical values to higher values, respectively.

Researchers put chicks in set-ups where the little creatures could choose between two cards with a number of dots on them other than five. Both cards would have the same number of dots. Sometimes the cards have two dots and at other times, eight.

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Researchers found the chicks were more likely to walk to the left card if the cards showed two dots. Chicks were more likely to walk right if the cards showed eight dots.

Their findings concluded that the habit of visualizing a line -- a "mental number line" (MNL) -- along which small values are located on the left and high values on the right, evolved millions of years ago before the ancestors of humans split from birds.

"Our results indicate that a disposition to map numerical magnitudes onto a left-to-right oriented MNL exists independently of cultural factors and can be observed in animals with very little non-symbolic numerical experience. Spatial mapping of numbers from left to right may be a universal cognitive strategy available soon after birth," said lead study author Dr. Rosa Rugani from the University of Padova in Italy.

Detailed findings of the new research were published in the journal, Science.

Tagschickens, chicks, mental number line, chicks can count, numerical values, counting