Ducks Are Smart Too

The common assumption that many people have is that birds are rather dumb animals, however, a recent experiment proves that birds are actually fairly smart. Zoologists Antone Martinho III and Alex Kacelnik performed a study on 1-day-old ducklings to test their ability to establish abstract relationships between sensory inputs such as color and shape. After just being born, these ducklings were able to simply move towards the color or shape of the object that they had been shown prior to the experiment. 

This ability to establish relationships comes from the ducks' ability to imprint which allows them to recognize and follow their mothers. This study is quite important because it shows, for the first time, that a nonhuman animal can connect these types of abstract relationships without any training. These animals, that are normally associated with the inability to undergo intelligent thought processes, are now viewed differently. The experiment shows us that animals' minds are full of complexities that we have yet to discover.