Fish can count, according to scientists, who have found that North American mosquito fish have the ability to count up to four.
Previously it was known that fish could tell big shoals from small ones, but researchers have now found that they have a limited ability to count how many other fish are nearby.
This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability. Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the university of Padua in Italy said: "We have provided the first evidence that fish exhibit rudimentary mathematical abilities." Last year, he and his colleagues showed that if a female mosquito fish is harassed by a male, she will try to avoid his attentions by seeking solace in the largest nearby shoal; demonstrating that the fish can tell bigger shoals from smaller ones. The team first conducted a series of experiments to see whether a lone mosquito fish would prefer to join a shoal of between two and four others. The results, published on the BBC Worldwide's natural history site, loveearth.com, show that females preferred to join shoals that were larger by just one fish significantly more often - consistently preferring shoals of four fish rather than three fish, and consistently preferring shoals of three fish over those containing just two. A second series of experiments revealed the fish's ability to process larger numbers. The fish were not able to directly count over four, but they were able to distinguish between larger numbers if they differed by a ratio of 2:1. For example, the fish could distinguish between a shoal of 16, compared to a shoal of eight others. But they could not tell the difference between a shoal of 12 compared to a shoal of eight, a ratio of 3:2. This demonstrates that fish are able to visually estimate larger numbers - but not very accurately. Prof Angelo Bisazza, who led the latest research, said that fishes' numerical abilities were actually on a par with the numerical abilities of monkeys and human infants between six and 12 months old, who were both able to visually count small numbers and less accurately estimate larger ones. Adult humans use a third counting mechanism, in which they verbally count much larger numbers. 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." For example, speakers of the Amazonian language Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond five. "Their limits in quantity tasks closely resemble what we found in pre-verbal organisms such as fish!" he added. A variety of animals, including pigeons, parrots, raccoons, ferrets, rats, monkeys and apes are to varying degrees capable of either counting, adding or subtracting numbers. Most need to be trained to do so. Without training, adult rhesus monkeys are capable of subtracting small numbers, and are capable of representing the number zero. Wild lions apparently have a rudimentary ability to count. When a pride of lions hears the roar of an approaching lion then two or three females, rather than a lone greeter will always go out to meet the stranger. But if two approaching lions can be heard, the resident females send out four of their own. |
2) The use of "everyday players" make you realize that the target market for this book is a group of folks who think of themselves as mere regular players, while a secret cabal of professionals keeps scooping all the jackpots. Why, if only these everyday players had access to some kind of inside knowledge!
The back-cover blurb is an even richer treasure trove of anti-logic. Professor Smith proudly promises to reveal the secrets of interpreting your dreams with the end goal of predicting the winning lotto numbers. We hate to break it to you but if the best your conscious mind can come up with is "buy a book about how to win the lotto written by someone who has not done so," then we're guessing your mind is not an unharnessed money-making probability super-predictor.
Tips include sage advice on topics such as "scanning the rows" and "filling in the gaps." Based on title alone, it's pretty clear that the author personally infiltrated the invisible floating MENSA fortress and wrestled secret Sudoku strategies out of the cold hands of dead Nobel Prize winners. The intellectual level of the average reader? Well, "scanning the rows" is split up over three separate tips. But it's not until you get to the part where two separate tips are given over to "taking a break" that you realize that the book you're reading was written after this phone conversation:
This may explain how Dr. Litten achieves the impossible halfway through his own book and fucks up masturbation (we're fairly sure fucks up masturbation is a fetish, but we're too terrified to Google it) with the chapter "Sharing Solos." We're not sure exactly how repressed the author is or how cruelly his burly father crushed his dreams of being a dancer, but once you've got two men naked, having handsex together we've got a different word for that. The ability to even write the phrase "sharing solos" and not see a problem indicates a level of psychotic self-denial that would make Nixon look like a weeping Oprah guest. The progression from "play with yourself" to "play with yourself and other naked men" puts you close to the most important naked-man-based revelation since Archimedes.
Add the fact that colloidal silver has slightly fewer medical benefits than punching yourself in the face and you've got a treatment so many levels removed from reality there's a genuine risk it could be run over by Superman riding a unicorn on his way to meet a reasonable political blogger.
Even assuming you receive a cranial trauma serious enough to make "Shakespeare as portrayed by prune-headed aliens" seem like a good idea, why would you ever pick the goddamn romantic comedy? Of all the Bard's works, this is the one that benefits least from a warrior culture and a language that sounds like you're choking on a furball. Hamlet would work, and be 20 times shorter as it would skip directly to the final scene where everyone kills each other. Macbeth would no longer be driven mad, cursed and slaughtered for his regicide:
