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."
They also stress the fundamentals of basketball even though they no can dunk.
Whale
If these guys were programmers, in 6 months we'd have a baby chick Turing machine up and running.
What the researchers fail to consider is this experiment's youtube Adorability Factor.
We have duck called Mersenne that quacks in primes.
Task Mangler
Who else could go for a bucket of KFC right about now?
Imagine a bewolf cluster of these.
And if you need more power, you just need to pick up more chicks.
how long until
Did somebody say hot chicks? That are good at math?
I knew you Slashdot guys were cool...
can they count before they're hatched?
They seem to have about as much grasp of math as some one the chicks in my last calculus class.
Convince the chicks to put the containers in the incinerator.
Chicks dig math. Slashdot rejoices until they RTFA.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
It's already proven that chicks can do math.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
...but what about baby dudes?
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.