Humans aren’t that special when it comes to counting, after all. New research has found baby chicks have a number sense, too, counting upwards from left to right just like people.

Italian researchers conducted a study in which they trained 3-day old chicks to maneuver around a screen panel with five dots on it to find a food treat. After establishing five as the anchor number, researchers began replacing the panel with others that had different numbers of dots. They discovered the chicks tended to go to the left panel when the dots numbered less than five and to the right panel when the number of dots was higher than five.

They repeated the experiment using a 20-dot panel, replacing it with either an eight- or 32-dot panel. Again, the chicks tended to waddle around the left panel when the dots numbered eight and to the right when they reached 32.

As outlined by Live Science, the researchers concluded the chicks associated lower numbers with the left space and higher numbers with the right space, exactly the same way humans orient numbers in relation to one another.

Study lead Dr. Rosa Rugani told the BBC the findings suggest an ancient origin to the human “mental number line.” Instead of learning through education or culture that lower numbers go to the left and higher numbers to the right, humans are simply hardwired to make that arrangement.Language and culture, it would seem, are not required to develop mathematical comprehension. The researchers plan to study other animals to see if they demonstrate the same number sense as the chicks.