Can Animals Count? Part-II
Centuries before, the performance of Hans, a horse which performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks to delighted European audiences, proved later that only a response in reality simply taking subconscious cues from his trainer. But it has triggered our scientist to explore more about this aptitude whether it is really there in animals.
Modern examples, such as Alex the African grey parrot, which could count up to six and knew sums and differences, are seen by some as special cases or the product of conditioning.
Recent studies, however, have uncovered new instances of a counting skill in different species, suggesting that mathematical abilities could be more fundamental in biology than previously thought. Under certain conditions, monkeys could sometimes outperform college students.
Apart from training, conditioning and innate ability, Adult humans use a third counting mechanism, in which they verbally count much larger numbers.
Some interesting facts of animals that can count:
*Red-backed salamander- could tell the difference between 1, 2 and 3 flies, but not between 3 and 4.
*Newborn chicks-can perform simple addition and subtraction.
*American coots can be tricked into raising the eggs of other coots. To combat this, they only add up their own eggs when determining how many more to lay - ignoring any rogue eggs that may have turned up.
*Primates like rhesus monkeys have a sense of number that is similar to our own.
*Mosquito fish also seem to rely on ratio in order to count; the fish can discriminate between numbers up to 16.
*Mongoose lemurs can perform numerical cognition.
*Honeybees-They can also apply that knowledge to tell the difference between 2 and 3, and 3 and 4. 5 seem to be their limit.
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