9 Weirdest Things Science Has Recently Discovered

9. Ducklings Can Think Abstractly

Abstract thought is usually reserved for "intelligent" animals such as apes, crows and humans, but scientists at the University of Oxford have found that newly hatched ducklings are able to comprehend abstract concepts such as "same" and "different".

When ducklings are born, they use a type of learning known as "imprinting" to lock on to their mother. This gives them an exceptional ability to recognise and follow moving objects.

The researchers took advantage of this and presented imprinting ducklings with a pair of moving objects either the same as or different from each other and trained them to follow them. They then presented the ducklings with a choice of different pairs of objects that were either the same or different to one another to see whether they could tell the difference and, amazingly, they could.

For example, a duckling that imprinted with a matching pair of cubes, and was then shown a matching pair of pyramids and a mismatched pair of a pyramid and a sphere, would follow the matching pair of pyramids even though they were not the same shape as the cubes they had imprinted. This indicated that they were not just locking onto the shape of a specific object, but also the abstract "same" nature of the two shapes.

Granted, we haven't yet had any duckling philosophers emerge into the limelight, but perhaps it's just a matter of time.