Monday, March 24, 2008

Not more than four...

Justin Howell sent me an e-mail with a link to an article about recent research that apparently shows that fish can count up to four. It goes on to say that their concept for 'four' and 'many' is essentially the same with the caveat that if n > 2m + 1, then they can still tell n and m apart. Even with this extra ability, I automatically thought of gully dwarves---in particular smart ones like Bupu who could get up to three.

Here is the article's money quote: Dr Agrillo said: "The most interesting thing is that fish performance is very similar to what is observed in adult humans who possess a very limited vocabulary for numbers."

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