Psience Quest

Quote:The evolutionary function in dogs to count enables to canine to quickly assess the number of objects in a scene, like how many there are predators approaching or the quantity of food available.

What is of interest is that humans also use the parietal cortex for this counting ability (what’s known as numerosity ). This ability is present even in infants. Throughout the animal world, the ability to ‘count’ appear to be innate.

The parietal lobe is at the back of the brain and is divided into two hemispheres. It functions in processing sensory information regarding the location of parts of the body as well as interpreting visual information.

According to lead researcher, Dr. Gregory Berns: “Our work not only shows that dogs use a similar part of their brain to process numbers of objects as humans do -- it shows that they don't need to be trained to do it.”