It seems that many pet owners claim that their animal can count. This is not a new idea, it seems the idea of animals counting goes back centuries. In the late 1800’s Wilhelm Von Osten came forward with the proposal that his horse, later named ‘Clever Hans’ had the innate ability to count. When Osten spoke a number, for example, the number seven, Hans was able to tap his hoof seven times, seemingly without any guidance. People were in awe of the animal’s ability to count out numbers up to ten and the horse travelled country to country showing off

Clever Hans: Image from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Osten_und_Hans.jpg

his apparently extremely rare talent. However when animal experts and psychologists analysed both the horse and owner’s behaviour it soon became apparent that the horse wasn’t counting, merely just tapping until receiving some sort of signal from his owner as to when to stop tapping. Leaving the question still unanswered, can animals really count?

Clever Hans is just one example of an animal associating a word with an action. When Hans heard certain words (1-10) he knew to tap his foot, just like most dogs associate the word “sit” with the action of sitting. All of this training is done through positive reinforcement.

More recently however the question of whether animals can count or not seemed to be answered when ‘Maggie the Counting Dog’ appeared on American TV screens in 2008. To me it seems crazy that a Jack Russell can count as I can barely get my five-year-old Jack Russell to sit or roll over. Nevertheless, owner Jesse had every confidence in her seven-year-old dog’s ability to count she pits her against a class of seven-year-old children for a maths test. (As seen in the attached clip)

Like Hans the clever horse, Maggie seems to have the ability to tap out the correct answer to a number of questions. Not only can Maggie seemingly add two numbers together, she can multiply, subtract and divide! She left the class stunned as she got over ten questions correct, however, left me slightly sceptical. As with Hans, Maggie’s behaviour conveyed the idea that her owner was giving a subtle signal as to when to stop tapping.

Jesse and Maggie also featured on an episode of Oprah (an American talk show) where Jesse claims that Maggie did not need taught any maths. In fact, she claims   that Maggie was born with an innate ability to count and just needed some positive reinforcement. Like Hans, animal behaviour experts were sceptical of Maggie’s supposed counting ability so conducted several experiments to test this claim. The scientist used white sound to blur out any possible secret sound signals that Maggie was receiving, this proved that there were no sound signals so the theory that Maggie could count still seemed possible. The owner was then asked to hide her hands and covered her eyes with sunglasses, again, Maggie the counting dog answered the equation correctly. Questions were then raised when Jesse left the room and Maggie was unable to give a correct answer to several questions. It was then concluded that Jesse was infact giving Maggie some sort of clue as to when to stop tapping and although the dog couldn’t count she was deemed extremely clever with her ability to pick up subtle clues.

Several other experiments exist where scientists try to prove and disprove whether or not animals can count. Some argue it is simply a memory test for some animals, or the ability to associate and action with a word, while others argue and try to prove that animals do have an innate ability to count. it does seem that certain animals have some understanding of numbers, such as mothers counting their young, this could also be disputed as to an animals ability to smell, sense or estimate how many young surround them. Although I am slightly torn on the answer to this question it does seem that animals are extremely clever individuals and their list of talents seem to be endless. Whether or not we will ever get a conclusion to the answer remains to be seen.

Full clip of Maggie’s interview with Oprah available at:  http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/maggie-the-dog-does-math