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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.

5 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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.

    3. 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.

  2. 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.