A duckling's capacity to imprint presents theirs their surprising capacity for conceptual idea, typically only connected with primates and different creatures considered profoundly wise. Ducks even beat "more astute" creature species in specific parts of dynamic thinking. Only hours after birth, those yellow fuzzballs comprehend ideas like "same" and "different," recall them, and apply them to never before seen objects with no meaningful gestures or preparing whatsoever.

     To investigate how ducks think, scientists presented infant ducklings to an assortment of items, giving them pairs that were either the equivalent or unique, in characteristics such as shade or color. Afterward, when shown totally different items, three-fourths of the ducks got up and followed the pair that had a similar connection they'd initially observed—regardless of whether it was one of  color or shape, equivalence or contrast. For instance, infant mallards who were first presented to two circles (same), later decided to follow a couple or triangles (same) as opposed to a 3D square and a cuboid (unique). “To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a non-human organism learning to discriminate between abstract relational concepts without any reinforcement training”," replied co-author Alex Kacelnik, of Oxford University's zoology department.

    The expertise would mean having the ability to perceive that a duck that is in the water, further away than usual and at a point that you have never observed is still mother, despite the fact that that definite picture isn't one you have seen of the mother previously. It's obvious from this study and others similar to it that “animals process and appreciate far more of the intricacies in their world than we’ve ever understood,” Dr. Wasserman said. “We are in a revolutionary phase in terms of our ability to understand the minds of other animals.”