Couple questions here:
#1
Is there any evidence to suggest animals can count? Or have a system of keeping track of quantities? It would seem like its a really basic and necessary thing to have a grasp of. How much food do i have? All are my babies here?
#2
Is there any scientific studies that have explored how animals process information? It seems it would be really hard to even THINK without a language system. I mean, just try thinking without using words, its tough!
Karl von Frisch did some great work on bee communication:
Dances as language
Knowledge about feeding places can be relayed from bee to bee. The means of communication is a special dance of which there are two forms…
I cannot give you science for this, but in retriever field events, those dogs who can count to three are much more successful than those who cannot. In reality, it is more of a memory thing, but OTOH the dogs also seem to be able to count up the number of gun stations they see when they come to the line, as they always seem to know when all of the bird have been thrown. I have also had dogs who seem to be able to count the number of birds in a series, as they act differently when coming in with the last bird.
Thinking without words isn’t tough. In truth, you think without words, and you think with words at the same time. Those are two different regions of the brain. There are plenty of aphasics out there who can think just fine.
Animals probably do not specifically count, but they can detect “numerosity” to some degree, that is, some animals (there are going to be big differences between, say, chimps and ants) can tell, under some circumstances, when a small group of things has more or less objects in it than another, or when an object has been added or removed from a group of similar ones.
Yes, there are quite extensive scientific studies on this, both on animals and on human babies who have not yet learned to talk or count: Numerical cognition.
Crows.
Read about Alex the African Grey parrot.