I missed the memo on this one, but apparently worms aren’t the only animals capable of doing math. A recent experiment coming out of the University of Tokyo suggests that Asian elephants have an unexpected aptitude for arithmetic. While many animals have a rudimentary counting ability, and are able to distinguish between sets with only a few elements, it seems that elephants are able to take things a step further, and can consistently differentiate between larger numbers such as 5 and 6.
Is this difference significant? Within the animal kingdom, it would seem so. Here’s how it breaks down, courtesy of this article:
A theory held by some is that humans and other animals share a basic neural system called an “accumulator” that can clearly distinguish numbers of objects less than three or four but that cannot reliably discriminate between bigger numbers. This accumulator is active in animals and, . . . → Read More: Math in the News: Elephants are Smarter than your Babies
