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Fish Can Count to Four
Khemist writes "Fish can count, according to scientists, who have found that North American mosquito fish have the ability to count up to four. Previously it was known that fish could tell big shoals from small ones, but researchers have now found that they have a limited ability to count how many other fish are nearby. This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability."
They are in School!!!
(Yes I know, I know! It is a stupid joke)
maybe they should help Taco learn how to count so I stop seeing that there are -1 replies?
Neurons fire when a certain threshhold of other neurons are firing around them, does that mean they can "count"? It's an electrochemical reaction, not intelligence.
Are we gonna be strapping up to four mini-torpedoes to fish now?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Scientists discovered that fish are excellent at mod 4 arithmetic.
-- My Sig is a P228.
"Limited mathematical abilities?" I wonder if they can shift left one bit...
red fish, blue fish
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Does that mean the child molestion rate among fish is even higher than among humans.
Have they ruled out the Clever Hans effect? Doesn't look like it.
Gul Madred: There are five lights. ... ...
Jean-Luc Salmon: I only count four.
*6 hours later*
Gul Madred clicks on a fifth light.
Madred: How many lights do you see?
Salmon: There are FOUR lights!
Madred: *facepalms*
Not sure if the can count but I think my betta fish is learning how to lift the gate that separates it from the other betta in the dual betta tank. A few minutes after I close the gate he's there at the bottom trying to lift it. I know fish are smarter than most give them credit for, thank god there not a reverse scuba suit...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Apparently it's been demonstrated that our basic ability to count to around 4 is controlled by specific neurons firing upon recognition of the specific quantity. That's why the OP spoke of fish having the same basic ability to count as apes, people with learning problems, etc. See http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_holt on page 3 for this:
"Dehaene has been able to bring together the experimental and the theoretical sides of his quest, and, on at least one occasion, he has even theorized the existence of a neurological feature whose presence was later confirmed by other researchers. In the early nineteen-nineties, working with Jean-Pierre Changeux, he set out to create a computer model to simulate the way humans and some animals estimate at a glance the number of objects in their environment. In the case of very small numbers, this estimate can be made with almost perfect accuracy, an ability known as "subitizing" (from the Latin word subitus, meaning "sudden"). Some psychologists think that subitizing is merely rapid, unconscious counting, but others, Dehaene included, believe that our minds perceive up to three or four objects all at once, without having to mentally "spotlight" them one by one. Getting the computer model to subitize the way humans and animals did was possible, he found, only if he built in "number neurons" tuned to fire with maximum intensity in response to a specific number of objects. His model had, for example, a special four neuron that got particularly excited when the computer was presented with four objects. The model's number neurons were pure theory, but almost a decade later two teams of researchers discovered what seemed to be the real item, in the brains of macaque monkeys that had been trained to do number tasks. The number neurons fired precisely the way Dehaene's model predicted--a vindication of theoretical psychology. "Basically, we can derive the behavioral properties of these neurons from first principles," he told me. "Psychology has become a little more like physics.""
It looks like this article is discussing the discovery of the same neurons performing the same function in fish. That's what this part of our own "intelligence" is at a basic level, apparently.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
Rabbits: One, Two, Three, Four, Hrair Fish: One, Two, Three, Four, School
Based on at least one person I've seen on that show, they very well could be.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Let me know when they can count to 5.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
politicians?
Sorry for replying to my own post, but here's the fish video that I was referring to in the previous post.
The trainer gets four goldfish to swim in some very interesting synchronized patterns that he appears to communicate to them through hand signals.
...therefore; I am a Fish!
Q.E.D.
Now, back to this fascinating "Dianetics" you were talking about....
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This will only encourage PETA to make loud press releases about how fish are "intelligent, sensitive creatures" and how the Inuit diet is a source of great evil in the world.
Not a typewriter
humans with very limited mathematical ability ... politicians?
:-)
No. Donations, polls, and votes all use mathematics quite heavily. Perhaps you are confused by how they handle "our" money, to get a better evaluation of their capabilities note how they handle "their" money.
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue screen...oh, fuck!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's sad how they test to see if fish can count, or even assume that they are in fact counting, when they could be looking at the overall size ratio of the school itself and not the fish collective individually. This is one of those studies we pay for with our tax dollars, that I would highly decree to be a waste of money.
If I look over at a group of 2 diff. gangs and by instinct I will go for the bigger gang, then chances are that I will go for the visibly larger gang. Now to test if they were actually counting, I would place 3 HUGE almost mutated fish in one group and 4 excessively small fish in another then see what the result would be. The size of the 4 fish would have to be smaller then the size of the 3 fish together
There would be no counting, its the overall size that affects their brain at a visual level, not sitting there 1 + 1 + 1 I guess I'll go with the left group....they are affected also by movement so if the school of fish all go to the left, they see the change as it happens by the group, not that they think if they go left then i go left...
I really think sometimes studies like these actually make people stupid.
you can probably only count to 3. which makes for an alarming 1 in 3.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
...be hard to do, without a working definition of intelligence. (This is the bane of all studies on intelligence in animals, computers, etc. Until someone can determine what it actually is that people are trying to look for, nobody can be certain whether or not they've found it. All they can be sure of is that they've found something, where the something has properties in common with another something that is believed associated with what they're really interested in.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the university of Padua in Italy said: "We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities."
Sweet for a change the United States government (probably) contributed zero to this complete and utter waste of resources.
(Which is not to say that fish can't count; I'm merely pointing out that I see no evidence for it in TFM.)
I can count way higher than 4, and nobody's writing research papers about me.
Stupid fish.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
My goldfish is smarter than my president.
"This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability." -from the _obvious_ department
The potted plants on my desk grow towards the side with two visible lamps instead of the side with one visible lamp. Does that mean they can count? Bacteria will migrate towards the side of the petri dish with a lower concentration of toxins, does that mean they can count? Honey bees often fly towards the garden with more flowers.. etc. ad absurdum. So, what makes the mosquitofish special?
They tested the behaviour of FEMALE fish, not male ones. We know that in humans women are not as good at the hard sciences as men are. Offcourse counting to four barely classifies as hard science, except maybe in Utah, but still.
Still the article makes me wonder, how do we count. I am currently looking at the number of open tasks on my taskbar, there are 5, I counted four instantly. I am now trying to convince myself that this is because the fifth "icon" is where in previous KDE versions part of the start menu was so that I overlooked it and not that I have the brains of a fish. A female fish. Some hard liqour maybe inorder, although sadly I then also frequently have a problem counting past the fourth drink.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Are the fish really "counting" to four? I think this is misleading. Just because they can recognize that 4 things is more than 3 things does not mean they are counting them; counting would imply a concerted, intelligent effort on the part of the fish.
As an avid poker player I was going to come in here and bring up the enormous amount of evidence I have seen that fish almost certainly cannot count to four, then I read a little further and realised its about the animal. Never mind.
Ya, maybe that's why Hillary still thinks she is in the lead and refuses to make public her tax statements... although, her accountant could be a fish, I know her husband was a shark.
Well, I suppose this means they're more than eligible to receive their own Holy Hand Grenades then. Science is always causing trouble...
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
You are the first person to use intelligence on this page. You are arguing against a claim that was never made.
The claim of intelligence doesn't even appear in TFA, so you're assuming that someone somewhere is claiming something they are not.
Maybe you should fire a few of your own neurons...
Reminds me of a story I read on here about ants being able to count.
Some guy put stilts on ant legs when the ants got to some food source. He then hid their 'home' and on the way back the ants overshot where their home was.
They also did it the other way around, put stilts on the ants on their way to food and took them off on the way back. The ants fell short.
Anyway, apparently ants can count higher than 4
crappy triceratops
Ah, then that means Homestar is dumber than a fish.
"Then what's two plus two?"
"Well, the force between any two charges is equal to the absolute value of the multiple of the charges divided by 4 pi times the vacuum permittivity times the distance squared between the two charges."
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
The fish are counting on there front two fins, so of course you get 00, 01, 10 and 11.
So, the female fish couldn't see the difference between a group of 4 and a group of 5, BUT was able to see it when the size difference between the groups was bigger: say, 4 to 6.
What I don't understand, is why this study concludes that fish "can count up to four" rather than "fish can tell apart objects with a size ratio greater than 3/4".
It's like saying I actually count the number of sand particles in a beach when I decide one beach is greater than another...
Am I missing something?
English is not my native language. Corrections are not only welcome but encouraged. Thanks.
-Walenzack.
Is this groundbreaking research suggesting that all fish might be of some Hebrew descent?
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
I saw a documentary with a prawn who could recognize its owner when he came into the room - despite the distortions of the glass tank, etc.
And monkeys/apes can count more then 4. Watch this TED presentation - they've got bonobos who figured out how to write all by themselves.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/76
No sig today...