I must admit, I have never properly thought about whether animals can count or not. I always knew animals like chimpanzees and apes were particularly clever, but I never focused on the mathematical aspect of their intelligence. This is mostly likely because when I think of maths I always think of equations and algebra. I forget that maths includes problem solving and basic counting, a skill which scientists have discovered that some animals possess.

Jason Goldman (2012) suggests that even though animals may not be spending their time doing algebra or trigonometry, “mathematical ability is widespread in the animal kingdom”. This all began back in 1891 with Clever Hans. Clever Hans was a horse whose owner believed could count and give answers to basic mathematical calculations, in which he gave the answer by stomping his foot. However, it appears the horse was reading body signals and cues from his owner, which allowed him to know when to stop stomping (Heyn, 1904). Although this horse may have been highly intelligent, he was not using any mathematic skills.

However, there has been successful case studies which have proven that certain animals can perform mathematical skills. According to Goldman (2012), Ants are the math geniuses of the animal kingdom. When ants leave their nests in search of food, they must remember their way back. The ants do this by calculating the distance they have walked, by counting their steps, known as “path integrate”. Researches Martin Muller and Rudiger Wehner decided to investigate how ants do this and if different variables would affect it. They attached stilts to the ant’s legs to see if this would affect the distance the ants would walk on the way to and from their nests. Each individual step was made longer than it would’ve been without the stilts, as they overestimated the distance (Goldman, 2012). They also did the same investigation with the ants, but this time they decided to cut the legs of the ants shorter. The ants were able to mathematically calculate that they needed to take more steps, clarifying Goldman’s statement that ants are the “real Math wizards of the animal kingdom”.

Furthermore, it has been discovered that Chimpanzees also possess mathematical attributes and skills. Professor Matsuzawa started a study of chimp intelligence over 30 years ago, in which Amuyu the chimpanzee has proved to be a highly intelligent animal. He lives at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University Japan (BBC, 2017). Amuyu took part in a test in which he had to remember the position of nine numbers randomly displayed on a computer screen, which were only on screen for 60 milliseconds (BBC, 2017). In this test, Amuyu outranked the human, not only doing it better, but completing the test and doing so quickly. This proves that Amuyu could engage with mathematical skills such as ordinality, the order of numbers e.g. 1, 2, 3, and cardinality, analysing the amount of numbers in a test. Overall, proving that chimpanzees can do maths.

References

BBC. (2017). Super Smart Animals – Ayumu – BBC One. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/31n3tMPHkZ8sQgxS5ZjdzN/ayumu [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

Goldman, J. (2012). Animals that can count. [online] Bbc.com. Available at: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121128-animals-that-can-count [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].

Heyn, E. T., (1904) ‘Berlin’s wonderful horse; He can do almost everything but talk – how he was taught’ The New York Times [Online]. 4 September. Available at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E02E2D91F3AE733A25757C0A96F9C946597D6CF (Accessed: 6^th Oct 2017).