Humans and other animals share a number sense’, an intuitive understanding of countable quantities. Having evolved independent from one another for hundreds of millions of years, the brains of these diverse species, including monkeys, crows, zebrafishes, bees, and squids, differ radically. However, in all vertebrates investigated, the pallium of the telencephalon has been implicated in number processing. This suggests that properties of the telencephalon make it ideally suited to host number representations that evolved by convergent evolution as a result of common selection pressures. In addition, promising candidate regions in the brains of invertebrates, such as insects, spiders, and cephalopods, can be identified, opening the possibility of even deeper commonalities for number sense.

人类和其他动物共享“数感”，即对可数数量的直观理解。经过数亿年的独立进化，这些不同物种（包括猴子、乌鸦、斑马鱼、蜜蜂和鱿鱼）的大脑完全不同。然而，在所有研究的脊椎动物中，端脑的大脑皮层与数字处理有关。这表明端脑的特性使其非常适合宿主数字表示，这些表示由于共同的选择压力而通过趋同进化而进化。此外，可以识别无脊椎动物（例如昆虫、蜘蛛和头足类动物）大脑中潜在的候选区域，从而为数感更深层次的共性开辟了可能性。