Baby Chicks Have Innate Mathematical Skills

Hugh Pickens writes "Chicks can add and subtract small numbers shortly after hatching, says Rosa Rugani at the University of Trento. Rugani reared chicks with five plastic containers of the kind found inside Kinder chocolate eggs. This meant the chicks bonded with the capsules, much as they do with their mother, making them want to be near the containers as they grew up. In one test, the researchers moved the containers back and forth behind two screens while the chicks watched. When the chicks were released into the enclosure, they headed for the screen obscuring the most containers, suggesting they had been able to keep track of the number of capsules behind each by adding and subtracting them as they moved. It is already known that many non-human primates and monkeys can count, and even domestic dogs have been found to be capable of simple additions but this is the first time the ability has been seen in such young animals, and with no prior training in problem solving of any kind."

Comments

Who would have thought

[qoncept]

They also stress the fundamentals of basketball even though they no can dunk.

Alternate hypothesis

[srussia]

They can smell plastic/chocolate residue really good.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[RyoShin]

This was my thought (except I doubt they used the actual chocolate containers). The smell of plastic is probably overwhelming in a lab, though, so more likely than not their own smell(s) were all over the containers due to spending so much time around them, and they just followed whichever smell was stronger.

The way to test for this would be to secretly replace the containers with 'placebo' ones that have no smell, and then see if the pattern repeats. That would control for the possibility of them sniffing their way over.

It's still an interesting conclusion (seeking out their own smell), but not one with the same implications if true.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[fuo]

It also doesn't way what order everything was done in... If there are 3 balls behind screen A and 2 balls behind Screen B and they moved the 3rd ball to screen A last, then maybe the chick just went to the LAST ball it saw move.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[CarpetShark]

Yep, I thought the same at first. Now though, I'm thinking there are probably a ton of possibilities: other chicks in an earlier, botched, non-double-blind experiment went that way, and left some kind of trail, the researchers laid out the experiment in some way that gave the chicks a clue...

I don't doubt for a second that most animals can count small numbers, although birdwatchers have been known to run in and out of hides to confuse birds about how many people are left inside. But I'm really sick of seeing all these flawed experiments that jump to flawed conclusions. Most of these "scientists" probably get into science because they're too proud to be the hairdresser they always wanted to be.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[DMUTPeregrine]

The problem is that most birds are already known to have very poor senses of smell. Chickens included. So it seems unlikely that they would be smelling plastic from behind the screens that accurately and that far away.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Chyeld]

I realize that it's unfashionable to actually read the article, but perhaps you might want to read one of the two that were linked in the summary. That way, when you are bitching about flawed studies, you don't look like an armchair scientist who did decide to pursue their dream of being a hairdresser, and is now regretting it.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[CarpetShark]

I realise it's unfashionable to actually contradict someone with facts rather than emotional outbursts, but you might want to try it some time. That way, when you're bitching about flawed posts, you won't look like you're just fighting your inner demons in public ;)

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[CrimsonAvenger]

I don't doubt for a second that most animals can count small numbers, although birdwatchers have been known to run in and out of hides to confuse birds about how many people are left inside.

There have been experiments of that sort with crows.

Apparently crows can keep track of the number of people inside till more than seven go in. After eight or more are inside, if seven leave they behave as if the blind is empty, suggesting very strongly that they can count to seven.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Chris Burke]

Yeah? Well vultures have great senses of smell. Maybe these were vulture chicks. I bet the scientists didn't think of that! I'm so smart.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Chyeld]

Ok then, the study wasn't flawed.

They did attempt several methods of 'throwing' the chicks off. It didn't work.

There was no 'trail' for the chicks to follow.

They accounted for the "maybe they just 'sensed' where the most eggs are", they covered their bases.

If you had actually read about the study rather than spouting bullshit based on the summary, you'd have known that.

In a series of simple maths tests, Rugani's team attached a fishing line to each of the plastic capsules and used it to move them behind two screens that the chick could see from behind a clear plastic door. When all of the containers had been hidden, the chick was set free to investigate.

Rugani's team found that when the chicks went in search of the capsules, they peered first behind the screen that concealed the larger number of containers.

In a more difficult test, the researchers moved the containers back and forth behind the two screens while the chicks watched. When they were released into the enclosure, the chicks still made for the screen obscuring the most containers, suggesting they had been able to keep track of the number of capsules behind each by adding and subtracting them as they moved.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Turken]

This makes me wonder what would happen if they repeated the experiment with turkey poults. Generally, newly hatched turkeys are so stupid that if you don't show them how to drink (by putting other birds in their enclosure or dunking their heads in the water trough) they'll soon die from dehydration.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[tonyreadsnews]

That's because most cows only have a 1 byte counter in them.

You have to get the ones that were abducted (but not eaten) by aliens which have been upgraded.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[thedonger]

While I disagree that alternate life-choice for these scientists is hairdressing, there is one potential flaw in this research: the assumption about the meaning of a math problem to chicken.

This test would be hard for many pre-teen humans. It seems to me that there is a more basic instinct at work then adding and subtracting, at least in the abstracted sense.

I read the article, but not the paper. I assume the paper contains more detail and insight.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Anonymous Coward]

A one byte counter would get them to 255, I believe you mean a 3 bit counter.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Hatta]

I wonder if they distinguish between a little more than 7 and a lot more than 7. If you sent 40 people into the blind, and had 7 come out, would they still think it's empty?

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because most cows only have a 1 byte counter in them.

I know you were making a joke, but a byte can hold 256 discreet values. If crows can only count to seven, then their counter is 3 bits large.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[fizzup]

Or a one-byte shift register.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[GodfatherofSoul]

...and it tastes Delicious!

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Chyeld]

The basic instinct being, know where the protectors are. Pre-teen humans, while brighter than a chicken, have different evolutionary/survival priorities.

No one's saying the chick's doing the math in it's head: "Ok, that was one container from that side, and there go two to that side...", it's definately instinct given these are four day old chicks with no other training.

But then again, a computer isn't thinking about the math it does either, so does it matter if the math is being done conciously or not?

Isn't the old adage: "The wonder is not how well the bear dances, but that it dances at all!"

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[Chris Burke]

A one byte counter would get them to 255, I believe you mean a 3 bit counter.

Crows aren't that sophisticated. They use a one-hot code where bits 0-6 encode counting numbers 1-7 respectively, bit 7 encodes "lots". Technically they have no concept of zero, so the case where no bits are set is an unhandled exception but one they generally are unconcerned with.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[try_anything]

Or, instead of counting, perhaps the chicks maintained a rough mental estimate of how much "parent stuff" was behind each screen. With only five balls, about 20% of the "stuff" moved each time a ball moved, so it's not clear why counting would be necessary to pick the right screen. The interesting thing about counting is that it's discrete and precise, perhaps even symbolic, instead of a rough estimate of continuous quantity. By not explaining how the researchers proved that distinction, the BBC article left out the only thing that makes the experiment interesting. Quite disappointing.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[try_anything]

Oops, to be fair, I have to add that the Guardian article suffers from the same critical omission. For some reason I thought both links were to the same article until another comment set me straight.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[ravenshrike]

That would be because I guarantee that they didn't prove the distinction. This smells greatly of a newspaper science translation, which is to say it's wrong on it's most basic assumption, that baby chickens can indeed count.

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[ravenshrike]

Fallacious conclusion. Just because they can judge which which screen contains more does not mean they can COUNT. Counting requires the ability to measure discrete units. If and when they perform this with 13 containers and 4 screens and return the same results I might be convinced of an ability to count. As it is, an ability to judge more is not the ability to count. For that matter, they never used an even number of containers on both sides, thus the lack of even a simple control.

Chic(k) computing

[Bovius]

If these guys were programmers, in 6 months we'd have a baby chick Turing machine up and running.

Re:Chic(k) computing

[JustOK]

Yah, like geeks can get any type of chick, Turing or otherwise, turned on.

Re:Chic(k) computing

[jgtg32a]

Hopefully these guys work out better than ducklings, because it was too easy to get stuck in inf loops with ducklings

http://xkcd.com/537/

Don't forget.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the researchers fail to consider is this experiment's youtube Adorability Factor.

Re:Don't forget.

[VampireByte]

The "youtube Adorability Factor" increases greatly if they are filmed up close with a wide angle lense. For an extra boost the baby chicks wear funny hats and/or sunglasses.

Oblig South Park reference: "cuuuute", "super cuuuuute"

That's nothing

[Centurix]

We have duck called Mersenne that quacks in primes.

Re:That's nothing

[Dog-Cow]

One at a time?

Re:That's nothing

[The Slashdot 8Ball]

One isn't prime

Re:That's nothing

[Dachannien]

One at a time?

No, it quacks them all simultaneously. It's a quantum duck.

Re:That's nothing

[martas]

it's not quantum, it's just multicore quacking.

This calls for something.

[A. B3ttik]

Who else could go for a bucket of KFC right about now?

Re:This calls for something.

[ControversialMatt]

I see an Ignobel in their future.

Re:This calls for something.

[CannonballHead]

I don't see what real, actual chickens have to do with KFC. ;)

Re:This calls for something.

[pjt33]

Back in the day I went to see Chicken Run in the cinema. On the back of the cinema ticket it had a voucher for KFC.

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[JamesP]

Imagine a bewolf cluster of these.

And if you need more power, you just need to pick up more chicks.

Hot chicks are good at math?

[GPLDAN]

Did somebody say hot chicks? That are good at math?

I knew you Slashdot guys were cool...

Re:Hot chicks are good at math?

[DaveV1.0]

I only know of one and her name is Danica McKellar

cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

can they count before they're hatched?

Re:cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you count your eggs before they hatch, but you're inside an egg, then I guess you only need to be able to count to 1.

Re:cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

But for anything outside the egg they need rather deep philosophy, theology and perhaps quantum physics.

Because believe me, when you are about to hatch, you really want to know if the Schrödinger's cat is there or not.

Re:cool, but...

[koro666]

Not if you enable backface culling... :)

Interesting

[shellster_dude]

They seem to have about as much grasp of math as some one the chicks in my last calculus class.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

If you help her with her math homework, maybe you can get her to proofread your Slashdot posts for you.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Something, something, counting chickens right after they're hatched

???

Profit

That means I have innate mathematical skill

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I ate them.

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[Krneki]

... and you get fresh eggs every morning!

I for one welcome our new data center overlords!

Next experiment...

[ajlitt]

Convince the chicks to put the containers in the incinerator.

Re:Next experiment...

[xouumalperxe]

I bet it'll be easier if you explain it to them that 8 out of 10 lab engineers believe that the container is most likely incapable of feeling much pain.

News flash

[momerath2003]

Chicks dig math. Slashdot rejoices until they RTFA.

Re:News flash

[Kyont]

Slashdot rejoices until they RTFA.

So... the rejoicing continued indefinitely?

Seems like a jump to conclusions.

[Beelzebud]

What's to say the chicks just aren't recognizing a simple pattern? Just because they could see that the larger group had moved from one side to the other doesn't mean they were counting, it just means they recognize the pattern, and went to the one they were familiar with.

Re:Seems like a jump to conclusions.

[pilgrim23]

Methinks some broad assumptions were made prior to experimentation: I would have thought a chick would bond with -A- Mother not the largest number of mothers. But then I don't work in the social welfare field....

Re:Seems like a jump to conclusions.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like you do when you count? All we as humans are doing is recognizing a pattern and assigning a mapping to it (nothing special about the numerals 1, 2, 3, ...), they might as well be chicken-scratching.

Re:Seems like a jump to conclusions.

[Capitalist1]

Errnt. Wrong. The judges cannot accept your answer.

What the chicks are doing is tracking perceptual sets. They deal with each capsule as a separate entity, and can keep track of some upper limit on the number of those entities. The fact that there is an upper limit on what they can track proves that is is what's happening.

If they were actually "counting", there would be no upper limit to the number of entities they could track. That's what counting is - an inductive method for reducing a set of entities to the set's order, making it one abstract intellectual entity.

Re:Seems like a jump to conclusions.

[JTsyo]

Let's not forget Clever Hans the horse.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=384

Re:Seems like a jump to conclusions.

[Beelzebud]

When we count it isn't mere pattern recognition. These chicks are not counting the number, and choosing which one has the correct answer. They're picking the group that they recognize and are familiar with. It's not mathematics.

Is this really "counting"

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Or are the chicks simply recognizing "more" rather than "fewer" or "less"?

Re:Is this really "counting"

[SatanicPuppy]

The difference is semantic. Obviously they're not doing arithmetic as we usually think of it, but if they're able to keep track of shifting quantities that's math.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Idiomatick]

Uhhh if you move 7 to one side then 6 back that is counting. All numbers are for is comparison to one another. I'm still rooting for the smell theory.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[CannonballHead]

Indeed. I wonder if a lot of animals would naturally, for example, choose a large pile of food over a small pile of food. Of course, then one gets into the smell stuff, too.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[RyoShin]

Since they had a screen over the second part, if this was by deduction then the chicks were keeping track of something in their head. It could have been just "more", but without being able to see both groups at once this would still require some sort of math to compare the groups from memory.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[MozeeToby]

In the final part of the experiment, the put screens up in front of the two groups so the chicks couldn't see them, then moved balls back and forth between the groups letting the chicks see how many were being moved each time. The chicks were able to keep track of how many were in each pile based on how many had moved from one to the other. That seems to indicate not just counting and greater than/less than but also addition and subtraction.

Unless of course they just went to the smelliest pile like many people have speculated.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[sameb112]

What is counting?

More, less over time.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Thelasko]

I wonder if a lot of animals would naturally, for example, choose a large pile of food over a small pile of food.

You just gave me an idea to make a computer out of the food chain.

I wonder what would happen if we put 42 pieces of corn in a field full of birds?

Re:Is this really "counting"

[derGoldstein]

Technically, *we* don't always do arithmetic the way we usually think of it (think about how infants develop their ability to quantify).

This method also may allow the gradual increase in "resolution". At some point (I mean a numerical quantity), they'll start either making "mistakes" or behaving in a way that is no longer "useful" in this context.

When you think about it that way, it's like gradually "overclocking" until you hit a boundary. As long as the result is easily defined as either right or wrong, you could define the behavior (or the result thereof) as "digital".

Now I'm thinking of how you'd go about overclocking chicks...

Re:Is this really "counting"

[VampireByte]

"I wonder what would happen if we put 42 pieces of corn in a field full of birds?"

You'd get Counting Crows.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[penguinbroker]

The difference is not just semantics. If they are making decisions based on qualitative notions (more) as opposed to quantitative (2 more) then it is a difference between doing discrete mathematics vs. reacting to an analog signal. The latter of which is not what we normally consider math, at least in terms of the subject's thought process.

It would be interesting to use different sized eggs to create scenarios where one group has more individual eggs but the other group has a higher total surface area (maybe volume) of eggs. If the chicks still chose the group with more individual eggs than one could make a strong case that they are capable of counting.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[nedlohs]

The article is from 4/1 but anyway.

How can you do that without counting?

A and B are the two locations and you can't see the what is in each, but you can see the balls move between them. Lets also say you know they are empty and there's a ball source with 5 balls you can see, the following happens:

S->A
S->B
S->A
S->A
S->B
A->B
A->B
B->A
A->B
B->A
B->A

How do I know which of A and B has more balls if I can't count?

Re:Is this really "counting"

[profplump]

In the general sense, the ability to determine that A > B requires arithmetic. Without arithmetic you could only look at two piles and say "they both contain many items"; the ability to say "pile A contains more items than pile B" requires some form of arithmetic, even if it is very simply.

And I'm not sure where you got this idea that arithmetic is purely discrete. For the purposes of calculation we often treat our observations that way, but in reality most arithmetic involves quantities that were not determined exactly. It's only our abstractions that allow counting in the first place -- "car" is not a measurable unit, it's an abstraction that we use to categories and describe our environment, and it's only such abstractions that can be discretely counted in the first place.

That's not to say that the birds were counting discrete plastic containers, as opposed to identifying the set of containers with the most visible surface, but in either case if the birds can determine that one set has "more" of something than the other set, it's still basic arithmetic. (And as always it's certainly possible that "more" had nothing to do with their behavior, and that the birds were motivated by something that the experiment did not control against, but that's beyond the scope of this comment)

Re:Is this really "counting"

[penguinbroker]

I don't disagree with you... But if we follow this train of thought then I would argue that many insects demonstrate mathematical ability. Moths (and many other bugs) tend to flock towards the brightest source of light in their fields of vision. Therefore these insects are demonstrating mathematical ability by showing the ability to determine that one source of light has more than the other. I don't buy this.

My point is that the researchers claim these chicks have discrete mathematical capabilities in that they have some sense of integer arithmetic (all eggs were the same sizes). They did nothing to rule out other possible causes, namely by using different sized eggs.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Anonymous Coward]

then moved balls back and forth between the groups letting the chicks see how many were being moved each time

That sounds like my kind of party.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Ironica]

It would be interesting to use different sized eggs to create scenarios where one group has more individual eggs but the other group has a higher total surface area (maybe volume) of eggs. If the chicks still chose the group with more individual eggs than one could make a strong case that they are capable of counting.

But the inverse is not true... if they chose the larger eggs, you could not infer that they were incapable of counting; their preference for the larger eggs could be independent of an accurate perception of which is greater quantity.

Of course, they could have a preference for the smaller eggs independent of quantity as well, so it wouldn't really rule out or confirm anything one way or the other.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Ironica]

Indeed. I wonder if a lot of animals would naturally, for example, choose a large pile of food over a small pile of food.

Actually, you could do an experiment with food to determine this.

You have a similar setup, where the animal watches you put a smaller quantity of food in one bin, and a larger quantity of food in another bin. Make sure it's discrete pieces of food, and a small number; say 3 in one and 5 in the other. The bins themselves are opaque. Then you allow the animal to choose to go to one bin or the other first.

I'm envisioning a bin where only ONE piece of food is visible/available at a time... a FIFO food queue, kind of like those fork dispensers at Whole Foods.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Stray7Xi]

It also depends on success rate they observed. I can be right more often then not with an algorithm that involves no counting. Select one unique object and follow it as it moves between screens (ignore all others) and go towards that that one. If there is 3 on one side and 2 on other, I'll be right 60% of time but clearly I have no concept of counting. Are the items similar enough they can't be distinguished? (Do they tilt a certain way on string, different heights?)

Plus with small numbers you can use nested ifs to map it that are clearly not arithmetic. I wouldn't be surprised if they're tracking a small subset of the items and being successful based on statistics. There's a difference between:

1. X=a+b+c+d;
2. if a&b&c&d X=4;
else if (a&b&c)|(a&c&d)|(a&b&d)|(b&c&d) X=3;
else if (a&b)|(a&c)|(a&d)|(b&c)|(b&d)|(c&d) X=2;
else if a|b|c|d X=1;
else X=0;
3. foreach i in set do X+=i; #feel free to complain about my lack of initialization

One's arithmetic, one's complex logic, and one's abstraction (with arithmetic). For small numbers it can be very hard to tell the difference between them. I think most people use complex logic for arithmetic (i.e. multiplication tables).

Re:Is this really "counting"

[Chris Burke]

The difference is not just semantics. If they are making decisions based on qualitative notions (more) as opposed to quantitative (2 more) then it is a difference between doing discrete mathematics vs. reacting to an analog signal. The latter of which is not what we normally consider math, at least in terms of the subject's thought process.

That's great and all, but in the final phase of the experiment, they obscured both piles of eggs behind screens so that the chicks could not see the piles. The chicks could only see the researchers move eggs in groups from behind one screen to the other, then move some eggs the other way, and so forth.

Even if their final evaluation was simply that pile A was bigger than pile B, even if their analysis of the number of eggs was "analog", getting to that result required adding and subtracting these "qualitative" values to nevertheless arrive at the right answer.

That's math, even if the quantities being operated upon are imprecise.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[residue]

but if they're able to keep track of shifting quantities that's math.

I don't think so. If they could see the quantities directly, it wouldn't be math, right? For example, seeing which has more water, a puddle or a lake - you wouldn't say that requires math.

So the difference is that they can't see the quantities. I think it's more likely to attribute to the chicks a primitive ability to visualize, rather than an ability to "count"... counting is just too abstract.

Re:Is this really "counting"

[T Murphy]

It's only our abstractions that allow counting in the first place -- "car" is not a measurable unit

Dude, just because you mention "car" doesn't mean its a car analogy. You better step it up if you know what's good for your car-ma. (Yes, I'm groaning too).

Re:Is this really "counting"

[__NR_kill]

Another interpretation could be that the chance of them noticing where the capsules go is higher when you increase the quantity. When the metro is coming, you don't count how many persons there are in the wagon, you just get on the one that has some place left; no arithmetic involved.

Is that technically addition and subtraction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't most animals have knowledge of groups by instinct? If they release a chick and it goes to a larger group of capsules, does that mean it is instinctively going towards the larger group for protection, or is it really sitting adding up the numbers.

I call shinanigans.

Re:Is that technically addition and subtraction?

[LordKronos]

It says the containers were placed behind screens. The chicks were able to see them moving between screens, but were not able to see how many were behind the screens. Thus their instinct to go to the larger group can only kick in if they know which group is larger. If they can't see the groups, then the only way they can know which is larger is to count and remember, or to use some other sense.

Yeah but...

[detox.method()]

can it run Doom?

More information...

[Anonymous Coward]

...can be found at, you guessed it, Chickipedia.

Here's a chick who knows more math than you or I

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danica_McKellar

Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[tepples]

Kinder Surprise isn't sold in the United States because FDA food safety regulations prohibit the importation or sale of candy that encloses something inedible. The closest counterpart in the United States is probably Wonder Ball, a Nestle product with hard candy inside a hollow ball of milk chocolate.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

weird, I see them at my local Russian store in NJ all the time...

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a good thing too. I'm sure many American lives were saved from the prohibition of Kinder Surprise candies.
I, for one, welcome our counting avian overlords?
Step 1. Hatch
Step 2. Count miscellaneous objects
Step 3. ????
Step 4. PROFIT!!! .... or be eaten... by a Grue.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[brer_squid]

It's not an FDA regulation, it's a customs regulation. You cannot import food containing an embedded non-food non-essential (e.g., sticks in lollipops) item. But it does seem to be pretty easy for individuals to bring small quantities over the border.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[fahrbot-bot]

FDA food safety regulations prohibit the importation or sale of candy that encloses something inedible.

That explains the unavailability of these from the Whizzo Chocolate Company:

• Crunchy Frog - The finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest-quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.
• Ram's Bladder Cup - Fresh Cornish Ram's bladder, emptied, steamed, whipped into a fondue with sesame seeds and then garnished with lark's vomit.
• Spring Surprise - Chocolate wrapped around two steel bolts that, upon the melting of the chocolate, spring outward and pierce the cheeks.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[ortholattice]

From your Wikipedia link:

Kinder Eggs are sold all over the world excluding the United States, where the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act prohibits embedding "non-nutritive items" in confections.

1938? I wonder what the real intent of this law was. I thought that babies only starting choking on small objects (or rather that lawyers discovered that they do) in the '60s or '70s.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[smellsofbikes]

>1938? I wonder what the real intent of this law was.

It was probably part of the ongoing reaction to the publication of Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle", where he documented/alleged pretty horrific working conditions and product control in the Chicago meatpacking industry, all of which were later factually verified by federal investigators except for his claim that workers who fell into boiling rendering tanks were left there and their rendered fat sold along with the cattle fat. (And that was after the meatpacking companies were warned that they were going to be inspected, and had cleaned up.)
Also, the banning of 'non-nutritive items' is not actually a ban but a threshold: there is an acceptable quantity of insect parts allowed in foods. (Since the raw materials have insect parts, that's pretty much unavoidable, no matter how much some safety-obsessed people natter on about it.)
However, in the 1800's and early 1900's, it was common to pad foodstuffs with anything that was cheap and added weight: plaster, ground-up horsehair, you name it. It's really no different than last year's Chinese melamine scare.
Sinclair's book is why the FDA came into being, by the way: public demand for government regulation of foodstuffs. When companies were self-regulating, they dumped in some pretty amazing things to keep their profit margins high and satisfy consumer demand as cheaply as possible. Many foodstuffs were dyed to match consumer expectations, using cheap, known-toxic dyes. I believe copper/arsenic salts were used to color American-made absinthe, for instance.

As for Kinder eggs, the italian restaurant down the street has boxes of them. My girlfriend loves them. There was a period two years ago where all they could get was kinders with plastic shells with the toys beside the chocolate -- presumably as legal imports -- but now they've gone back to the original stuff with the chocolate outsides and the labelling all in German. We went to a grocery store specializing in Balkan stuff a while back and got some ripoff Kinders -- they looked similar, but they tasted like gubmint chocolate (burnt) and had really crappy toys.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[Ironica]

Does this mean that Cracker Jacks are not confections according to the FDA? In that case, what on earth ARE they?

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[Hatta]

Also, the banning of 'non-nutritive items' is not actually a ban but a threshold: there is an acceptable quantity of insect parts allowed in foods.

Insects are actually quite nutritious.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

I see them sold everywhere at the ethnic stores in the Bay Area.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[smellsofbikes]

As it happens, I just bought a big can of "Bamboo Carterpillars" (their spelling) at the local Laotian Grocery Store.
It was, however, a joke gift. A gag, if you will.

However, a guy I know distantly has a eaten canned silkworm pupae on video if you'd like to watch.

Re:Why no Kinder eggs in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, is your girlfriend like 12? This is Slashdot after all.

Chicks ARE good at math!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't this story titled "Scientist proves chicks are good at math"?

How did they rule out smell?

[flyingfsck]

Occam's Razor - Simple explanation: More containers stink more of chicken poop.

Re:How did they rule out smell?

[drawlight]

Occam's Razor - Simple explanation: More containers stink more of chicken poop.

Be careful not to cut yourself with that razor.

Someone tell the President of Harvard

[Grobstein]

But Larry Summers says chicks can't . . .

nah I love you man

Something similary about cockroaches long ago...

[Chris Burke]

Some years ago an experiment appeared on /. where they tested how roaches would hide in shelters. Roaches naturally like to hide in the biggest groups that they can. The researchers found that if they put 50 roaches into an enclosure, and put two shelters in the enclosure, one that could hold 50 and one that could hold 40, all the roaches would pile into the big enclosure. If they put two enclosures that could hold 40, the roaches would split into two groups of very close to half (like 26 and 24) in the two enclosures, with roaches actually moving from one to the other in order to balance it out.

Not counting, but it did demonstrate they had some notion of group size and size equivalence, and that they considered more than their own benefit (otherwise a roach would not have left an enclosure that could have held more roaches), possibly even communicating to do so.

It's weird how smart animals with tiny tiny brains can be.

False assumption?

[memorycardfull]

Associating a certain screen with more incidents of objects recently disappearing behind them doesn't necessarily indicate the ability to add or subtract. The idea that moving the objects back and forth is confusing to the chicks and thus requires math to sort out the answer might be a false assumption. If the chick is responding to the stimulus of objects disappearing behind a screen, and the effect of the stimulus is cumulative as more objects disappear behind the screen and the effect of this stimulus is strongest for the most recent stimuli and decreases over time I think that the result would be what is observed in the experiment. I think what is more interesting about this experiment is that the chicks have an innate sense of object permanence which is an ability human beings are not born with.

Re:False assumption?

[memorycardfull]

I am loathe to reply to my own comment, but I believe that my conclusion that the experiment indicates that chicks have an innate sense object permanence rests on false assumptions as well. I would just like to retract that for the sake of consistency.

Re:False assumption?

[TinBromide]

True, if chickens flock, then there's a safety in numbers instinct going on as well. There may not be math, but an egg moving behind screen A means that screen A has more safety warm and fuzzies than screen B. As more eggs move behind either screen A or screen B, they might get more fuzzies associated with either screen. However, and this is the big assumption made, while we clearly differentiate between math and warm and fuzzies or a desire to go somewhere, the chickens may be processing with a flock mentality based on warm and fuzzies as the operators and object permanence as the variable storage.

Re:False assumption?

[Anonymous Coward]

You make an interesting point about flocking instinct. The chicks are trained to bond to the capsules as if the capsules were mothers. Many animals gather in flocks and herds by instinct. The instinct for safety in numbers by avoiding separation from the group would seem likely to involve some ability to monitor where the largest grouping is even when it is not it sight so as to avoid separation from the flock or herd. Another commenter makes an excellent point that perhaps the little buggers can just smell the plastic of the capsules!

Re:False assumption?

[rpillala]

Isn't this accumulation of stimuli the way counting works?

Re:False assumption?

[memorycardfull]

Response to accumulating stimuli may be part of the way that humans count; however, to say that counting involves response to accumulating stimuli does not mean that response to accumulating stimuli involves the ability to count. If this were the case any creature that responds to accumulating stimuli could be considered to have the ability to count.

Re:False assumption?

[Shawndeisi]

If the chick is responding to the stimulus of objects disappearing behind a screen, and the effect of the stimulus is cumulative as more objects disappear behind the screen and the effect of this stimulus is strongest for the most recent stimuli and decreases over time I think that the result would be what is observed in the experiment.

That sounds like an innate ability to do math to me... Whether or not they're consciously counting or whether an underlying mechanism is responsible, an event would be occurring that only math can account for.

Re:False assumption?

[Chuckstar]

Exactly what I was thinking.

Also, they should test this with different sized containers to see if it is the number of items or cumulative size of the items that they are reacting to.

I once saw a write-up where someone was testing (IIRC) dogs. Up to some number, dogs could recognize a number of objects. Above that, they went by area/volume. In other words, dogs could pick the picture that had the most items up to about seven, or something like that. For greater numbers of items, they tended to pick the picture in which the items took up the most area. Twelve big circles taking up more space than fourteen smaller circles, for instance.

Re:False assumption?

[Ironica]

Associating a certain screen with more incidents of objects recently disappearing behind them doesn't necessarily indicate the ability to add or subtract. The idea that moving the objects back and forth is confusing to the chicks and thus requires math to sort out the answer might be a false assumption. If the chick is responding to the stimulus of objects disappearing behind a screen, and the effect of the stimulus is cumulative as more objects disappear behind the screen and the effect of this stimulus is strongest for the most recent stimuli and decreases over time I think that the result would be what is observed in the experiment.

So how does their ability to distinguish between obscured quantities based on incremental changes differ from arithmetic? I don't think the scientists are suggesting that they are using abstract symbols to represent quantities, and applying additive and subtractive properties to them... but simply that, when given a problem ("Which screen hides a greater quantity?"), they can arrive at a correct result.

Because the items are moved one by one, rather than split into a group and moved all at once, it implies there's some sort of increment/decrement system going on. Whether it's incrementing and decrementing symbols or warm fuzzies, and whether they keep track by positioning their toes differently or by visualizing in their head what is behind the screen, they're doing *something* that gets the results of arithmetic.

Re:False assumption?

[memorycardfull]

I see your point. I think it is an indication of just how mechanical instinctual behavior can be. I think that the quantification of the stimuli only has meaning to scientists and interested parties like us. It is the focus on the quantification and the incremental nature of the stimuli that is distracting here. We perceive the result as amazingly mathematically accurate but natural selection has simply hard wired the chick to be very accurately focused on exactly where mommy is most likely to be.

!News

[Thelasko]

It's already proven that chicks can do math.

Re:!News

[Rigrig]

Better link (NSFW, contains math)

Hot Chicks 2009...

[geekmux]

Did somebody say hot chicks? That are good at math?

Yeah, I thought so too, until I found no link for the wall calendar or hot math chick of the month...dammit.

They're still food

[gregthebunny]

delicious > "innate skill"

Re:They're still food

[againjj]

Unless you're vegetarian.

Re:Something similary about cockroaches long ago..

[Rockoon]

Seems to me that a random walk (err, random 'lets go and visit') would explain the balancing, even if you started with a 40:10 situation.

In the 50:0 situation, there is nobody to visit on the other side.

Bad science.

[DaveV1.0]

This does not show that chicks can add and subtract. All this shows is that chicks have some concept of more and most. That is all.

Re:Bad science.

[SydShamino]

And how do they know how many is more when they can't see them?

Move five behind screen A. Move two over to behind screen B. Chick can't see any of them, but decides to go to screen A.

Move five behind screen A. Move three over to behind screen B. Chick can't see any of them, but decides to go to screen B.

Repeat for more complicated patterns and more moves before the chick is freed to move.

The only way they could know that there are more behind a screen is to sense them (and chickens have poor senses of smell and no ESP) or to have made mental adjustments of "more" and "most" based on movement of items. And that's addition and subtraction.

Re:Bad science.

[DaveV1.0]

How do we know it is not judging on the strength of smell?

Re:Bad science.

[ral8158]

Birds have notoriously poor senses of smell, and this takes place in a lab where the smell of plastic would probably be overwhelming to that ability anyway.
Could you read the article, please, instead of automatically assuming the researchers are dumbasses who don't know how to formulate an experiment?

Yum

[No2Gates]

And they taste just like rattlesnakes.

Actually...

[Rachel Lucid]

Actually, not true; Ethnic stores carry them, which leads me to believe they're under less stringent regulations than other groceries.

Also, Wonder Balls DID have toys in them originally; they switched to the hard candy after people complained. Figures.

Re:Actually...

[tepples]

Ethnic stores carry them, which leads me to believe they're under less stringent regulations than other groceries.

That, or just "it's not illegal if you don't get caught." Perhaps the ethnic stores you frequent just haven't been ratted out yet by someone working for Nestle, bitter about Wonder Ball being forced to switch to hard candy.

Re:Actually...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

They are not sold legally in the US. I know its kind of hard to believe that the US Customs could be so porous as to let in such a dangerous and illegal product such as a chocolate covered toy. Or that our law enforcement would be so poor as to allow such items to remain on store shelves.

Re:Actually...

[Rachel Lucid]

This is the same customs that manages to constantly wreck some Star Wars geek's fanwank, yes? ( http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=60002 )

Not that I think Kinder Surprise are a huge threat or anything, but still, what priorities...

Re:Actually...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Pretty funny that. If I worked in customs, I'd probably do the same thing. Imported bottled water, wouldn't pass my inspection without a couple drill holes in the package.

Finally...

[pablo_max]

Something else to do with baby chicks!!

Re:Finally...

[multipartmixed]

Yeah, no kidding.

I have a whole bunch here I can't do anything with. I thought they were baby ducks, and I bought them for pike fishing.

Re:Something similary about cockroaches long ago..

[Chris Burke]

In the 50:0 situation, there is nobody to visit on the other side.

But it didn't start that way, it only ended that way. And why would randomly walking roaches stop walking unless they knew there were no roaches in the other location? And why would they stop walking once the two small enclosure scenario reached equilibrium, unless they were capable of seeing that equilibrium had been reached between the two groups? That's also the part that suggests possible communication, because not all of the roaches would have even been directly aware of the size of the other group at the equilibrium point yet still decided to stop their random visits.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't April fool's Wednesday? Or did I wake up in some strange new dimension?

Re:Huh?

[jeremyp]

Perhaps you should RTF BBC A linked to by the Slashdot story. Pay particular attention to the publication date at the top.

Just following the last one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder whether the chicks are just going to the screen to which the last container was moved. What if they moved three behind the first screen at once, and then slowly moved two behind the second screen before releasing the chicks so that it would test memory (a prerequisite, of sorts, to counting) and actually being able to tell more from less...

What??

[dominious]

Chicks can add and subtract small numbers

skipped to the /. comments before reading any further...

shortly after hatching.

DANG! oops, wrong kind of chicks

My Dog Can Do Calculus

[Rude Turnip]

Whenever I throw something and my dog catches it, he's inherently working out the position of the object and its velocity in order to catch it.

Re:My Dog Can Do Calculus

[Bovius]

You can teach an old dog new tricks, but you can't teach a dog new integration methods.

Re:My Dog Can Do Calculus

[Have Brain Will Rent]

My dog can do calculus too. Unfortunately he is afflicted with paranoia so he just lets it hit the floor and gives it good looking over before he decides to put it in his mouth. Then he catches it the second time. LOL.

My previous one was a wolf-hybrid and she could tell if it was something she wanted to put in her mouth while the object was in flight - even with something the size of half a pea and moving fast she would always make the correct choice, 100% percent of the time. That always amazed me. That and that she could do this and still catch the object even if the trajectory took it quite a distance from her original position. I think we grossly underestimate the processing power of these animals. My guess would be that in their own domain, a reasonably smart dog (hey some are dumb as bricks) is the equivalent of a 2-3 year old human.

Re:My Dog Can Do Calculus

[Anonymous Coward]

...but, could he do that just after he hatched?

Re:My Dog Can Do Calculus

[Ironica]

Whenever I throw something and my dog catches it, he's inherently working out the position of the object and its velocity in order to catch it.

Your dog can do calculus when you set up a ball-throwing machine, and, from the angle of the chute and previous experience with velocity of objects, the dog goes to the correct location to catch the ball before its thrown (even though you're on a new field she's never seen before).

Re:My Dog Can Do Calculus

[nEoN nOoDlE]

So why did he eat your homework?

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of geese.

FTFY.

Pix of young chicks here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.seedforsecurity.com/picture20.php?type=animal&imageid=156

Time matters

[gmuslera]

try the same test after they grown blonde hair

Posted April1

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we sure this isn't an April Fools prank?

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked for this mandatory comment ...

No, But..

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but they can run Linux.

Re:No, But..

[FreeFull]

Everything can run Linux. The problem with birds that aren't penguins running Linux is that they turn into penguins. No fix has been found.

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[Adriax]

Imagine a bewolf cluster of these.
 
Been there, done that. http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

Survival skills

[PPH]

Its likely that many animals, particularly those of the prey kind, can estimate relative quantities. More instances of the 'friend' type means greater security. More of the 'foe' increases the odds of being eaten.

Chicks can count but do they know that they can?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, chicks can count eggs. And dogs who catch Frisbies can do calculus.

But neither example means they are able to reflect on the logical basis by which their brains compute solutions to either problems.

latent memory

[jcgam69]

Birds have a genetically specified latent memory for flight so maybe these baby chicks have a latent memory for counting too.

tastes like...

[carpefishus]

Yeah, but what do they taste like?

Now, for the rest of the story...

[BForrester]

...but what about baby dudes?

Re:Now, for the rest of the story...

[gujo-odori]

Anyway, I don't believe it. Everybody knows chicks suck at math ;-) (Just kidding! My wife kicks my ass at math.)

Microsoft's wet dream?

[Perp Atuitie]

So maybe MS will soon be able to dispense with that troublesome outsourcing and hire true American programmers for chickenfeed.

you were all April fooled :P

[Anonymous Coward]

look at the date in the link, please ;D

Get a clue people

[Biff Stu]

Do you want to know why the OMG Ponies campaign ultimately failed? It didn't change our fundamental attitudes. Everybody knows that the PC term for 'chicks' is 'babes.'

Re:Get a clue people

[Creepy]

well this one says specifically:
Baby Chicks

so obviously they couldn't get it right either PC or no...

  I thought the title was a bit strange - "baby chicks" (when referring to birds) is redundant - chicks are baby birds. Then again, this being /., we'd probably have 200 people that didn't read TFA and a massive flame war going on here by now if it just said Chicks have innate mathematical skills (and probably lots of lol d00d! posts).

Is it really "mathematics" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't surprise, nor impress me.
I would EXPECT animals to have at least the basic ability to distinguish between "numerous" and "not numerous" groups of objects. That's a basic survival skill. Substitute these plastic capsules for predators for example, or a source of food. It would seem only logical that the basic concept of "quantities" would exist even in animals. I'd also assume they aren't assigning number labels like a human would, (ie: the name "twelve" to represent the quantity of 12), nor actually adding or subtracting "numbers". So it's not really doing math unless you consider "that pile is bigger" logic as being math. The chicks are gravitating to a "state" (that state being the higher quantity) rather than thinking 10 - 3 = 7 therefore go to pile B.

Secret Herbs & Spices

[Drone69]

If the chickens can count to 11 then that's good enough for the Colonel.

Chickens are smarter than people

[lxrslh]

From "The Chicken Vanishes" by Calvin Trillin The New Yorker, February 8, 1999 ....On my walks from my house in Greenwich Village to Chinatown, I have truly had the custom of taking out-of-town visitors to a Mott Street amusement arcade, otherwise known for video games, where the out-of-towners get to try their hand at playing tictacktoe against a chicken. My wife waits on the sidewalk. She has a low tolerance for video games, and she somehow acquired the impression that requiring a chicken to play ticktacktoe is cruel. ("Cruel!" I say to her. "I've never seen the chicken lose. What's cruel?") The chicken is in a glass cage that is outfitted with the sort of backlit letters common to pinball machines - so that, at the appropriate time, "Your Turn" or "Bird's Turn" lights up. When it's your turn, you push a button on the outside of the cage to light up your "X" in one box or another; when it's the bird's turn, the bird goes behind an opaque piece of glass marked "Thinkin' Booth" and pecks once to produce an "O" in a box you were sort of hoping it wouldn't notice. If you win, you get a bag of fortune cookies. I furnish the entry fee - fifty cents. I am, after all, the host. When I tell the chicken story, I always point out that nearly all the people I take down there have precisely the same response to the the prospect of playing ticktacktoe with a chicken. After looking the situation over, they say, "The chicken gets go go first!" "But she's a chicken," I say. "You're a human being. Surely there should be some advantage in that." Some of my guest, I always report with some embarrassment, don't stop there. Some of them say, "The chicken plays every day. I haven't played in years."

Re:Something similary about cockroaches long ago..

[CorporateSuit]

How disgusting.

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[Locke2005]

And if you need more power, you just need to pick up more chicks.
If I knew how to do that, I wouldn't be spending all my time on slashdot, you insensitive clod!

I'm not impressed

[Locke2005]

If they were really smart, they'd figure out a way to not be so tasty! And by the way, the original article was posted on April 1.

Re:cool, but... Well, if they couldn't,they'd have

[davidsyes]

botched their hatched job... hahchi hahchi hahcha hahcha...

litter mates

[rubah]

the bit about bonding with the containers made me think of my dog. When he was a poor, orphaned puppy, he lived in a box. He outgrew many boxes, but still treats them like littermates, roughhousing with any that we bring around as though they were actual dogs.
Christmas was difficult, getting down the boxes of ornaments and to wrap gifts in without him chewing them up.

Bogus! Not mathematical!

[dontmakemethink]

The chicks simply remember that there is more usable room behind one of the screens, which is a spatial orientation skill, not a mathematical one, and is definitely hard-wired into any organism with eyes. Chickens don't rely on math at all, so it wouldn't work itself into their DNA.

If there were two holes, one leading to a space too small to sleep, the other of good size, and a chick remembered which was the larger one, would you assume it measured the spaces mathematically? Knew how many cc's each was? Hell no. Just because there's bumps on the tray doesn't mean chicky has a built-in abacus.

I believe it

[Big_Monkey_Bird]

I believe it. I once had a chicken kick my ass at tic-tac-toe

Cracker Jack situation is more like cereal

[tepples]

Does this mean that Cracker Jacks are not confections according to the FDA?

Cracker Jack snack mix doesn't embed the toy inside a piece of food. It just places the plastic-wrapped toy in the same bag, much like the toys in breakfast cereal boxes or in a McDonald's Happy Meal for cricket's sake.

patternmatching

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole summary was a mind job. I agree with the tag "patternmatching".

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[martas]

*another joke about how chick also refers to women, usually young and attractive*

Re:Something similary about cockroaches long ago..

[martas]

so, roaches are more humanitarian than humans? if you did this with people, i'm pretty sure the strongest 40 would end up in one, leaving the weakest 10 in the other...

Story is missing a tag.

[Cruciform]

nochickenleftbehind

In case you don't know

[PingPongBoy]

Chicks are baby chicks. Or so I've always thought. Concepts like adolescent chicks and adult chicks have never entered my consciousness. Can there even be such things?

At any rate, if adult chicks were found to be counters but baby chicks not so good as counters, then how would that be explained? There isn't exactly a chicken school in the barnyard.

Duh...

[Czernobog]

"This bastard has a bigger wallet than that bastard" and all that... Chicks have always had mathematical skills.

Re:Chic(k) computing, oblig

[Bazer]

Imagine a bewolf cluster of these.

And if you need more power, you just need to pick up more chicks.

Forget it. The algorithm for that is NP-complete.

You want to know what the chick was thinking?

[freaker_TuC]

One more family member going to the cooking cauldron ...

Re:Something similary about cockroaches long ago..

[aqk]

Cockroaches! pshaww..!
Clearly most slashdolts have forgotten the Google Arithmetic machine.
But then, I am but a lowly illiterate /. intern...