Can elephants do mathematics?
Scientists in Japan have been working with three Asian elephants to explore the extent to which they are able to perform counting tasks.
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The three elephants who live at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo were presented with a touch screen and were required to press the start button with their trunk.
Japanese researchers are studying whether elephants can perform simple calculations.
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They then had to select one of a number of pictures of fruits. If they selected the picture with the larger number of fruits they were rewarded with a treat. If they selected the image with fewer fruits then no treat was given to them.
Two of the elephants were removed from the study as one of them performed quite randomly, and the other refused to take part!
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However ‘Authai’, a 14 year old female, was top of the class. She managed to achieve a 66.8% pass rate which is well above the level of chance.
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As well as enjoying her fruit treats, Authai has given us an idea that maybe elephants can recognize groups of objects and compare their sizes.
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So whilst an elephant may not be able to help with your algebra homework, they are better at counting than we previously thought.
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Note: The research was checked and approved by animal welfare experts.