Do animals count like people?

When people do not know how to calculate, humans can count 1 2 3 4 . What about animals, do they know how to count?

In people, counting numbers is one of the basic abilities. According to a study published on The Royal Society, "one, two, three, four, five" are virtually unchanged sounds from ancient times to now in all languages, probably around 10,000 -100,000 years.

However, for centuries, people did not believe animals could calculate.

Can animals count?- (Photo: Esther Aarts).

More than 100 years ago, the view of whether animals could count changed completely when Clever Hans demonstrated his mathematical solving ability in 1907 by knocking his clogs onto the floor.

Since then, scientists have begun to trace and find many evidence that: not only humans, other animals can count, as an instinctive activity to survive.

is expressing its computing power.

From the frog's "husband" story

On the nights of the reproductive period, the male frogs in Central America raced to show their talents for many hours to conquer female frogs: they competed with teeth grinding, just like how people play games can tell Many words in one breath.

The competition began: "Son Tinh" frog gritted his teeth two times after a string of frog frogs, "Glass" frogs responded 3 times. "Son Tinh" will continue to grind 4 pieces, "Thuy Tinh" will counterattack 5 times. So the thrilling competition takes place until the "out of breath" frog loses, usually 6 or 7 grinds.

Although this cry can attract predators, because of "Mị Nương" , male frogs have no other way. The frog just sat listening and counting, then mating with the male frogs had the most times of grinding teeth.

Frogs - (Photo: Getty Images).

Scientists believe that frogs can sense numbers. In addition, they also found special cells in the brains of amphibians that could calculate sound signals as well as the time interval between them.

The story of the frog frog competition is just one of many answers to the question: Can animals other than humans count?

Spider, fish, chimp . also count?

According to The New York Times, scientists have found that the evolving animal sequence is not only capable of distinguishing large or small numbers but also can distinguish numbers , such as 2 other 4 and 4 10, and even another 40 60 .

Araneidae spiders can count how many prey are stored in their "home" . When scientists try to steal their food, spiders will go looking for time proportional to the number of missing primers.

Fish often swim in crowds - (Photo: Alamy).

Fish can also count. We still know small fish often live in groups, the more they are, the easier it is to escape the enemy.

The essential requirements of life make them very fast. For example, freshwater fishes can often find that the number of 4 fish is different from the number of 5 fish, or 8 fish are not the same as 10 fish, so the fish will choose to swim in more crowds.

Or, like the barramundi (scientific name: Gasterosteus aculeatus) has greater discrimination ability: they can see the difference between the group of 6 fish and the group of 7, or group of 18 and group of 21 in the flash. eye.

The speed of discrimination may be equivalent to that of some species of birds and animals and is comparable to humans.

The most advanced is the chimpanzee. One can teach chimpanzees to associate a group of objects with a specific number in the 1-digit Arabic set. In addition, chimpanzees can know 3 squares that are related to 3, 5 squares that are related to 5. Chimp can also arrange numbers in a certain order.