Monkeys surprisingly proficient at mental arithmetic: study

[BERIGAN]

Those damned dirty apes! Or monkeys...whatever....

Monkeys surprisingly proficient at mental arithmetic: study

Dec 18 10:11 AM US/Eastern

A college education doesn't give you much of an edge over a monkey when it comes to doing some basic arithmetic, according to a study released Monday that underscores the surprising mental agility of our simian relatives.

In a rapid fire test of mental addition, monkeys performed almost as well as college students, showing they're no slouches when it comes to number crunching.

The macaques got their sums right 76 percent of the time, while the students got the correct answer 94 percent of the time in a series of increasingly challenging maths tests.

"We know that animals can recognize quantities, but there is less evidence for their ability to carry out explicit mathematical tasks, such as addition," said Jessica Cantlon, a researcher at Duke University Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Durham, North Carolina.

"Our study shows that they can."

The study in the Public Library of Science Biology comes just a couple of weeks after Japanese researchers revealed that young chimps outperformed college students in tests of short-term memory.

The young chimps surprised the Japanese investigators by being able to retrace patterns of numbers flashed up on a computer screen faster than their human rivals.

The current study, according to researchers, goes one step further by showing that primates can process information as well as reproduce it, and that there's more to our closest living relatives than "monkey see, monkey do."

It also suggests that basic arithmetic may be part of our shared evolutionary past.

"Humans have some pretty sophisticated problem-solving skills, but this study suggests they may also be able to tap into some primitive method of making calculations," said Carlton.

She said the assumption is that the monkeys are using the same kind of primitive non-verbal mathematics.

For the test, the monkeys and students were seated at a computer and shown a screen with a certain amount of dots, followed by a screen with another amount of dots.

The third screen contained two boxes, one containing the sum of the first two sets of dots, and one containing a different number. The monkeys were rewarded with the soft drink, Kool-Aid, for selecting the box containing the correct sum of the sets.

The students were told not to verbally count the dots.

The average response time for both the college students and the macaques was one second, and at least in one other respect, their performance was surprisingly similar.

Both the monkeys and the students took longer to make a choice and made more mistakes when the two choice boxes were close in number.

"We call this the ratio effect," said Cantlon. "What's remarkable is that both species suffered from the ratio effect at virtually the same rate."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=07...;show_article=1

[BERIGAN]

and check out this video! I saw this a few weeks ago on ABC, and was blown away!

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/8986.html

[porcy62]

From your avatar I suppose they could even play drums.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Evidence is mounting up. With a haircut and a suit, who knows where they could get in?

Thomas Love Peacock was right! In "Melincourt" (1817) he had an orangutan become a Member of Parliament. And now look!

MG

[Niko]

saw a documentary on television where some monkey was supposed to get something to eat out of some complicated box-type thing... when the candy had fallen into some obstacle (and the experiment was formally over) the monkey went to the other room to get a screwdriver, removed the screws from the experiment set-up and finally got his candy...

[porcy62]

saw a documentary on television where some monkey was supposed to get something to eat out of some complicated box-type thing... when the candy had fallen into some obstacle (and the experiment was formally over) the monkey went to the other room to get a screwdriver, removed the screws from the experiment set-up and finally got his candy...

I wouldn't had think about it.

Edited December 19, 2007 by porcy62

[Niko]

a fellow vegetarian friend of mine likes to argue that there is no convincing reason not to eat disabled people when you think its ok to eat animals (especially given that human meat should optimally fulfill your own body's needs)

(of course you can always argue that you don't care whether your eating habits are morally correct, you just like the taste of pork better than that of a disabled child)

[porcy62]

a fellow vegetarian friend of mine likes to argue that there is no convincing reason not to eat disabled people when you think its ok to eat animals (especially given that human meat should optimally fulfill your own body's needs)

(of course you can always argue that you don't care whether your eating habits are morally correct, you just like the taste of pork better than that of a disabled child)

I don't think your friend is funny, actually I think he is an idiot and, probably, unconsciously nazi, (Hitler was vegetarian AND sent disabled in extermination camps). And maybe mentally disabled, so if I were him, I wouldn't joke about such things with hungry non vegetarians. One never knows.

Please don't take it personally, nothing against you Niko or vegetarians, but I heard better arguments in favour of vegetarianism.

BTW what has to do your friend's opinion and behavior with the subject of this thread ?

edit: and your post might have offended some of the fellow members with disabled relative.

Edited December 19, 2007 by porcy62

[rockefeller center]

a fellow vegetarian friend of mine likes to argue that there is no convincing reason not to eat disabled people when you think its ok to eat animals

Why restrict to disabled people? And yes, you're way off topic.

[Niko]

a fellow vegetarian friend of mine likes to argue that there is no convincing reason not to eat disabled people when you think its ok to eat animals (especially given that human meat should optimally fulfill your own body's needs)

(of course you can always argue that you don't care whether your eating habits are morally correct, you just like the taste of pork better than that of a disabled child)

I don't think your friend is funny, actually I think he is an idiot and, probably, unconsciously nazi, (Hitler was vegetarian AND sent disabled in extermination camps). And maybe mentally disabled, so if I were him, I wouldn't joke about such things with hungry non vegetarians. One never knows.

Please don't take it personally, nothing against you Niko or vegetarians, but I heard better arguments in favour of vegetarianism.

BTW what has to do your friend's opinion and behavior with the subject of this thread ?

edit: and your post might have offended some of the fellow members with disabled relative.

and the organissimo gig at the steak house is gone...

this is a counter argument against arguments like "i eat it because it can't do maths" or "i eat it because it can't talk"

(to me these experiments show that most of these arguments (and you really do hear them when you ask people why it is ok for them to eat meat and do other not so nice things to animals) are very thin (not that i didn't think so before) and there i see the connection to the subject of this thread)

my (and my friend's i guess) position is that it's not ok to kill other animals (human or not human, disabled or not), no matter whether you want to eat or just exterminate them... for us the question whether it is ok to eat disabled people doesn't come up... (obviously it's not ok, i'd say)

if you ask me why i eat plants, i can only say, it's because i am an inconsequential bastard (the same thing i was saying when i was still eating meat); edit to add: put differently i don't have a convinving argument for another place where one should draw the line between who one should eat and who not; i just think that 1) if one doesn't know what's right it's better to draw the line in a more conservative way (talked to a chinese colleague recently who says she can't eat dog anymore now that she has lived here for several years and has seen the personal relationships people have with their dogs; similar for horses...) 2) people who say the line belongs between humans and animals (or between humans plus some animals and the other animals) don't have convincing arguments although many of them think what they are doing is the obvious thing to do

unconsciously nazi... who isn't?

Edited December 19, 2007 by Niko

[Niko]

a fellow vegetarian friend of mine likes to argue that there is no convincing reason not to eat disabled people when you think its ok to eat animals

Why restrict to disabled people? And yes, you're way off topic.

hey, i'm just testing the new moderator thing...

[Shawn]

According to the book I'm currently reading, humans basically taste like SPAM. I never liked SPAM though, so I don't think I'll test the theory.

[porcy62]

a fellow vegetarian friend of mine likes to argue that there is no convincing reason not to eat disabled people when you think its ok to eat animals (especially given that human meat should optimally fulfill your own body's needs)

(of course you can always argue that you don't care whether your eating habits are morally correct, you just like the taste of pork better than that of a disabled child)

I don't think your friend is funny, actually I think he is an idiot and, probably, unconsciously nazi, (Hitler was vegetarian AND sent disabled in extermination camps). And maybe mentally disabled, so if I were him, I wouldn't joke about such things with hungry non vegetarians. One never knows.

Please don't take it personally, nothing against you Niko or vegetarians, but I heard better arguments in favour of vegetarianism.

BTW what has to do your friend's opinion and behavior with the subject of this thread ?

edit: and your post might have offended some of the fellow members with disabled relative.

and the organissimo gig at the steak house is gone...

this is a counter argument against arguments like "i eat it because it can't do maths" or "i eat it because it can't talk"

(to me these experiments show that most of these arguments (and you really do hear them when you ask people why it is ok for them to eat meat and do other not so nice things to animals) are very thin (not that i didn't think so before) and there i see the connection to the subject of this thread)

my (and my friend's i guess) position is that it's not ok to kill other animals (human or not human, disabled or not), no matter whether you want to eat or just exterminate them... for us the question whether it is ok to eat disabled people doesn't come up... (obviously it's not ok, i'd say)

if you ask me why i eat plants, i can only say, it's because i am an inconsequential bastard (the same thing i was saying when i was still eating meat); edit to add: put differently i don't have a convinving argument for another place where one should draw the line between who one should eat and who not; i just think that 1) if one doesn't know what's right it's better to draw the line in a more conservative way (talked to a chinese colleague recently who says she can't eat dog anymore now that she has lived here for several years and has seen the personal relationships people have with their dogs; similar for horses...) 2) people who say the line belongs between humans and animals (or between humans plus some animals and the other animals) don't have convincing arguments although many of them think what they are doing is the obvious thing to do

unconsciously nazi... who isn't?

You might have specified your intention better, because from your post it wasn't clear that you were moving towards vegetarianism. Actually I didn't know you're one of 'that thing'

I could buy some of your arguments, actually pigs are much clever then koalas, and we protect koalas, though I bet that some koalas are much clever (and much cute) then a lot of people I personally know.

Usually I made general considerations about enviromental and how animals are treated when I chose what to eat.

About the line between humans and animals we should enter in a very though philosophic playground.

About nazi...no, I am not. I am consciously dumb and it required me a long and costly therapy to be aware of it.

[DTMX]

saw a documentary on television where some monkey was supposed to get something to eat out of some complicated box-type thing... when the candy had fallen into some obstacle (and the experiment was formally over) the monkey went to the other room to get a screwdriver, removed the screws from the experiment set-up and finally got his candy...

If he can fix a leaking toilet, send him to my house.