Infants and animals are able to understand approximate quantities of different types, in terms of relative proportions of the numbers of different sets of objects, provided the difference in numbers ...

Several species of animal can count, but only humans can do so using abstract number symbols like ‘2’ or ‘4’. Now we know we do so using a different set of brain cells from those we use to recognise ...

Is it possible to count objects you can't see? If you've ever received a boxed gift, or a mysterious package from Amazon, you might have tried to lightly shake the box to try to guess its contents.

Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. It’s only the latest evidence of animals’ talents for numerical abstraction — which may still differ from our own grasp of numbers.