Researchers in Barcelona conducted experiments with four zoo giraffes that indicate the animals might be capable of basic math. Photo courtesy of the University of Barcelona<\/p>\n
July 1 (UPI) — Researchers in Barcelona conducted experiments with four zoo giraffes that indicate the animals might be capable of basic quantity tracking, or simple math.<\/p>\n
The University of Barcelona, University of Leipzig and Max Planck<\/a> Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology researchers, who published their findings<\/a> in the journal Scientific Reports, presented four giraffes from the Barcelona Zoo with two containers containing different amounts of carrot pieces.\n<\/p>\n The researchers then covered the containers, and the animals watched as the humans added or subtracted more carrot pieces to them.<\/p>\n The giraffes selected the containers with more carrot pieces after addition 68% of the time, which the researchers said exceeds the number that could be attributed to random chance.<\/p>\n Researchers said further tests controlling for whether the giraffes were using other methods of decision-making — such as choosing containers based on whether or not the researchers touched them — indicated two of the giraffes may have been using that method, but the other two continued to choose the containers with more carrots at the same rate.<\/p>\n They wrote the results of those two giraffes suggest “the potential use of more complex mental computations.”\n<\/p>\n The giraffes were less successful in trials where carrots were subtracted from the containers, choosing at a rate consistent with random chance.<\/p>\n The researchers said the giraffes are likely not performing math the same way as humans, but they show a basic understanding of numbers that affect their decision-making.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers in Barcelona conducted experiments with four zoo giraffes that indicate the animals might be capable of basic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2851,14104,60693,66882,90,56,54,55,17658,4407],"class_list":["post-668773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-funny","tag-max-planck","tag-odd","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weird","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}