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Many Animals Can Count, Some Better Than You (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The story of the frog's neuro-abacus is just one example of nature's vast, ancient and versatile number sense, a talent explored in detail in a recent themed issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, edited by Brian Butterworth, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, C. Randy Gallistel of Rutgers University and Giorgio Vallortigara of the University of Trento. Scientists have found that animals across the evolutionary spectrum have a keen sense of quantity, able to distinguish not just bigger from smaller or more from less, but two from four, four from ten, forty from sixty. Orb-weaving spiders, for example, keep a tally of how many silk-wrapped prey items are stashed in the "larder" segment of their web. When scientists experimentally remove the cache, the spiders will spend time searching for the stolen goods in proportion to how many separate items had been taken, rather than how big the total prey mass might have been. Small fish benefit from living in schools, and the more numerous the group, the statistically better a fish's odds of escaping predation. As a result, many shoaling fish are excellent appraisers of relative head counts.

16 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Let's See What Happens... by JohnPerkins · · Score: 2

    ...if we take away the puppy.

  2. Cats can't count, though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    One of my ex-wife's cats was a bit mean - she'd do things she knew she wasn't supposed to, like knocking things off bookcase shelves.

    But only when no one was watching...

    My ex and I heard this damn cat misbehaving one day, and we both walked into the living room to find her knocking books down. She stopped, acted all innocent, and started grooming herself.

    My ex walked out of the room - I stood perfectly still. That little fucker watched my ex leave then jumped into the bookcase and returned to knocking things down.

    I shouted, "Hey!" and I got this "Where the hell did you come from!" surprised look from that damn cat.

    Cats can't count to two.

    1. Re:Cats can't count, though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He knew you were there - you were just irrelevant - and you yelled and startled him. And his look was 'who the fuck do you think YOU are - you pathetic inferior being! I AM a cat! YOU are nothing but a bald ape!'

    2. Re:Cats can't count, though by Hetero · · Score: 2

      THIS is what you put in the room to discipline cats. I guarantee you you'd never have that problem again.

    3. Re:Cats can't count, though by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      One of my ex-wife's cats was a bit mean - she'd do things she knew she wasn't supposed to, like knocking things off bookcase shelves.

      But only when no one was watching...

      Cat's aren't stupid. They know when they do things that piss you off- and will frequently do it when you're not looking. When I first graduated University, I got a small flat and a cat. The cat love destroying the blinds, she also knew I didn't love it when she destroyed the blinds. She quickly learnt to do it only when I wasn't home... or I was in bed.

      She knew, if she smashed up the blinds in the kitchen whilst I was on the computer in the bedroom I'd come and tell her off... so she didn't. She also knew, if I were in bed trying to sleep and she did it, I would be too lazy to get up and tell her off. Thus, she destroyed them when I was out, or in bed... if I were anywhere else in the apartment, even if she couldn't see me (or I her) she would leave them alone, fearing my wrath knowing I would hear her.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    4. Re:Cats can't count, though by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Cats generally don't do things like this if you spend a little bit of time playing with them or exercising them. I once had a cat that liked to get up to all kinds of similarly mischievous deeds until I eventually figured out that it was just bored. After spending 20 minutes having it chase around a toy mouse on a string or a laser pointer, it wouldn't engage in other types of destructive behavior.

      Cats don't need a lot of attention. They're more than happy to spend most of a day sleeping or lying in the sun. However, they are predators and are wired to stalk, chase prey, etc. Satisfy those behavioral needs and they're not going to go around trying to find other ways to scratch those itches. It also makes the cat a lot more friendly towards you as well.

    5. Re:Cats can't count, though by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I know a number of guys who got a bonus-cat with a relationship. They tend to have accidents far from home. However, in my favorite case, my buddy got blamed for disappearing a worthless misbehaving cat but he pled innocent. He really had no idea what happened to ol' Frisky until one day a fireman came up to the door with an animal control officer. They related that they'd just raided the nest of an owl and found about two dozen cat collars. His wife's cat had been nailed at about 180 MPH from the sky by a big owl and learned she wasn't quite as tough as she was when she was scratching and biting everyone in the household. Talons + beak > domesticated claws + teeth.

    6. Re:Cats can't count, though by argStyopa · · Score: 3, Funny

      Any idea where he got his Owl Attractant spray?

      Asking for a friend.

      --
      -Styopa
  3. Pointless trivia by IWantMoreSpamPlease · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have a pair of very large monitor lizards that can count.
    They know when feeding time is (Pavlovian learned response no doubt there) and if I give them, each, 10 food items, they are happy.
    If I give one 9, and the other 11 for example, the one with 11 will eat 10 and leave the other one. The one with 9, will hunt for a 10th food item, and won't stop until he finds something to eat.
    This happens regardless of food item size (to a point, they cannot eat 10 full sized rabbits, for example, but 10 rats is easy to do)

    --
    So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
  4. Animal Psych by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I took an animal psych class back in college and at the time it was believed that most animals could count to at least 7 linearly, and beyond that were excellent at estimating logarithmically. The smarter the animal, the further it could count linearly, in general.

  5. Counting Crows by fox171171 · · Score: 2

    Heard a story many years ago about crows. Food on the ground, but they would not come down because of a nearby group of people. The group walked behind a building and out the other side and walked away. When they left one of the group behind the building, and the crows would not come down. When nobody stayed behind the building, they came down for the food. Did the crows count the people?

    1. Re:Counting Crows by Gilgaron · · Score: 2

      I've had few interactions with crows but witnessed a few glimpses of their famous intelligence. One afternoon I was in the back yard and heard very unusual crow calls, which is telling since usually their calls already sound unnervingly like a human conversation in a language you don't know. Two crows were coordinating with one another to harass a young red tail hawk into leaving the area. The hawk was of course better suited for combat, but the crows were interspersing generic calls of aggression with some novel (to me) chatter and taking turns diving on the hawk and distracting him again before he could try to riposte. I've seen songbirds harass bigger birds similarly, but they seem to rely on their small size and greater agility, whereas the crows being more on par in size and acrobatics seemed more dependent on their partner to keep them safe.

    2. Re:Counting Crows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Recent research has shown that bird brains have a much higher neuron density than mammal brains, most prominently in the forebrain, so even though their brains are much smaller they are more 'optimized' and can therefor reach the same complexity as that of much larger animals like primates. See for example http://www.pnas.org/content/113/26/7255.full

  6. Re:If the Frogs can count ... by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2, Funny

    In what way? I think their economy is way more stable than ours.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  7. Not with symbology like numbers, mind you.. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    So I'm thinking that within a non-sentient/pre-sentient brain, this 'counting' process works, neurologically-speaking, like an op-amp integrator circuit, with a comparator-tree watching the output? The voltage accumulation reaches certain threshold values, trips the associated comparator? Then of course there's someting analogous to the 'reset' switch on the capacitor in the feedback loop?

  8. Cat Clock by Zorro · · Score: 2

    A hungry cat has no snooze button.