Can Animals Count??
Many animals can, but
not in the way humans do. Yes!! Mathematical ability is widespread in the
animal kingdom. when we add up the
apples in the basket, we step through the sequence of numbers until we run out
of apples. This requires the language ability to remember the words for each
number and their order. Animals probably can't do this. But there is another
type of counting where you intuitively judge the number of objects without starting
from one. This is called Subitising
and most humans can do it for four or five objects and sometimes more.
Many animals have
this skill too, even quite primitive ones. Red-backed salamanders can tell the
difference between one, two and three. Mosquito fish can manage upto four. In an experiment,
researchers placed a chimpanzee in front of
two sets of bowls that contained chocolate pieces. Each set had two bowls, and
to receive their treats, the chimps had to select the set that had the largest
combined number of chocolate pieces, in other words adding together the number
of pieces in each individual bowl. They succeeded even on trials where one of
the bowls in the "incorrect" set contained more chocolates than
either individual bowl in the "correct" set.
Likewise,
Ring-tailed lemurs can also put groups of different numbers of objects inorder
of size. They can tell which group is larger, but only one group is atleast
twice as big as the other.