Cuttlefish Can Count to Five
Number sense is a pretty big deal for humanity, underlying the mathematics that empowers our world -- but now a new study reveals the number sense of the ever-fascinating cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are science headline superstars, so you've probably read about their amazing chromatic communication systems, shapeshifting prowess and hypnotic powers. Of course all of these biological gifts are useless without brains to power them -- which is why cuttlefish boast one of the largest brain-to-body size ratios of any invertebrate.
These amazing little creatures have to be able to react quickly, learn and adapt if they wish to score that next meal or secure themselves a mate. That's where our latest study comes in, pondering just how much number sense they employ in deciding which prey to pursue. Number sense is essentially how the brain naturally extracts numbers from the surrounding environment, similar to how it identifies colors. It's not math or a number system, but rather the primal thing beneath those systems. To test the number sense of cuttlefish, researchers at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University introduced a cuttlefish into a tank, along with a transparent two-chambered box, so that the cuttlefish might choose between the two encapsulated meals. In order to access number sense, they played with varying ratios between the two boxes. One shrimp in box A, five shrimp in box B -- and just about every possible variation on that. 1 to 4, 2 to 3, 4 to 5. They even played around with larger shrimp and dead shrimp to see how those conditions factored into their decision-making. They tested 54 different pharaoh cuttlefish and found that the creatures had no problem picking larger quantities of shrimp over smaller quantities.
This entails logarithmic counting, or counting based on integral increases in physical quantity. A human infant uses this when picking five teddy bears over one teddy bear, but the one-month-old cephalopods beat that by excelling when the rations grew harder to discern, such as five shrimp to four shrimp, a feat that larval humans tend to fail at. In fact, the researchers theorize that given the longer computation time in these incidents, the cuttlefish are not only using logarithmic counting, but are actively engaged in counting the shrimp zipping about in each box. The cuttlefish factored in additional preferences -- live shrimp are better than dead shrimp, bigger shrimp are great, but are riskier -- but the creatures can at least count to five and maybe higher, even if their unlanguaged minds lack words for the quantities. We can scarcely fathom the mind of the cuttlefish -- just try to imagine number comprehension without knowledge of the names and symbols we use. Their intelligence is alien to us, yet quite comparable in number sense to human infants and other primates. So think about that the next time you see a cuttlefish at the aquarium, perhaps counting the number of hairless apes crowding up to the glass.
These amazing little creatures have to be able to react quickly, learn and adapt if they wish to score that next meal or secure themselves a mate. That's where our latest study comes in, pondering just how much number sense they employ in deciding which prey to pursue. Number sense is essentially how the brain naturally extracts numbers from the surrounding environment, similar to how it identifies colors. It's not math or a number system, but rather the primal thing beneath those systems. To test the number sense of cuttlefish, researchers at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University introduced a cuttlefish into a tank, along with a transparent two-chambered box, so that the cuttlefish might choose between the two encapsulated meals. In order to access number sense, they played with varying ratios between the two boxes. One shrimp in box A, five shrimp in box B -- and just about every possible variation on that. 1 to 4, 2 to 3, 4 to 5. They even played around with larger shrimp and dead shrimp to see how those conditions factored into their decision-making. They tested 54 different pharaoh cuttlefish and found that the creatures had no problem picking larger quantities of shrimp over smaller quantities.
This entails logarithmic counting, or counting based on integral increases in physical quantity. A human infant uses this when picking five teddy bears over one teddy bear, but the one-month-old cephalopods beat that by excelling when the rations grew harder to discern, such as five shrimp to four shrimp, a feat that larval humans tend to fail at. In fact, the researchers theorize that given the longer computation time in these incidents, the cuttlefish are not only using logarithmic counting, but are actively engaged in counting the shrimp zipping about in each box. The cuttlefish factored in additional preferences -- live shrimp are better than dead shrimp, bigger shrimp are great, but are riskier -- but the creatures can at least count to five and maybe higher, even if their unlanguaged minds lack words for the quantities. We can scarcely fathom the mind of the cuttlefish -- just try to imagine number comprehension without knowledge of the names and symbols we use. Their intelligence is alien to us, yet quite comparable in number sense to human infants and other primates. So think about that the next time you see a cuttlefish at the aquarium, perhaps counting the number of hairless apes crowding up to the glass.
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