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

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

[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: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: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.

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: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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.