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A study published October 23, 2026 found that crows can evaluate visual information twice as fast as mammals, suggesting that birds' compact nervous systems enable them to handle cognitive tasks at significantly higher speeds. The research reveals fundamental differences in neural processing between avian and mammalian brains, with implications for understanding how evolution has optimized different nervous systems for different ecological niches. The finding highlights the computational efficiency of bird brains despite their smaller size compared to mammalian brains.