A long time I saw a guy from PNG showing how they count in base-20. 5 digits on one hand, and the joints and segments are another 5. The other hand and arm add up to 20. They then point at a digit/joint/segment to convey the "20's" place and so forth.
I did a similar experiment with horses, which apparently cannot count at all despite the "hoof counting" trick. If you have an entire Gator full of oats, separated into feed bags or buckets, and the horse KNOWS all those oats are there, merely setting a container on the ground, or bringing it closer to the horse, or just setting it down slightly closer, results in the horse going after the container instead of the jackpot. It's like they have no idea whether amounts are greater or smaller, just whichever food is closer. Similarly, but with a single notable difference, if you get two horses, the dominant one will always want whatever the other is eating, even if it' a significantly lesser amount. That one "dominant" horse will waste more time chasing off the "rival" and travelling between food supplies than actually eating for about ten minutes. Then they get hungry enough that they just eat whatever is in front of them at the time. They do this because they are grazing animals, so relative size doesn't normally matter to them. Food is everywhere, and any other animal is a threat. A horse can be terrified by a small child, or a rabbit, because the horse is too flighty to know that those things couldn't possibly hurt them. They have no sense of their own size, except when it comes to other horses, and even then, it's dicey. A small horse can run off a big one if it is aggressive enough. I didn't continue my experiments much further because I wasn't really conducting a proper experiment and I love horses too much to bother. But I still affectionately call them "stupids". Yes, they are intelligent enough to be trained very well, and they aren't completely clueless. I had a horse that figured out how to open doorknobs. But that same horse couldn't figure out that not EVERY part of the fence was a potential gate. He'd just stand at the fence, waiting for me to open it, when the gate was open twenty feet away. Beautiful creatures, kinda smart, and still dumb as a bag of hammers when compared to a human.
The gate thing reminds me of my chickens. I see so many people online saying that chickens being dumb is just a myth and they're actually very intelligent. Meanwhile I'm just watching mine throw themselves against the fence, desperately trying to get to the food on the other side, when the open gate they just left through 30 seconds ago is 2 feet to the left. I once watched one get lost on a path I dug through deep snow with no forks or intersections and one turn.
@@ryankunst668 That is interesting but I have different observation with my chickens, although it depends on a chicken. i have a few that are dumb as hell, lets be real, those few are constantly on a 1% of a brainpower. But the rest (majority) of the flock will always run through the gate behind me, in order to get to the food. Couple days ago a hen jumped on me in order to get to the duck feed I was carrying, she is heavy enough that I wasn't able to hold the feeder, and hens were able to eat watered duck feed, that they love for whatever reason. Now I have to be really careful around them, because otherwise they will knock feeder out of my hands or will scratch my back jumping on me. I also had a chicken that was able to open the gate - before I placed type of the door, they can't physically open without fingers- then she was sitting, allowing other chickens to run out, and finally she was escaping. Another hens forced me to put an extra net on a one part of chicken coop, otherwise they were using stairs and aviary roof as a place allowing them to escape from the coop and into neighbour garden - which has better grass in it, because no chickens. They still try to get through that net. But only those smarter ones, again, dumb members of the flock can barely understand the rooster signalling danger.
Horses and cows are scared of red color; it signals blood! I had a red car and drove by, the horses were curious who's coming, their heads over the fence,looking. But when I came close, all horses turned their heads away, they didn't want to see the car. Verv much suppose, it was because of the color!
There's a whole subset of experiments about just this thing - and the results are pretty interesting (though hard to control for all sorts of potential confounders)
@@MinuteEarth aaaannnddd?? saying there are experiments but not saying anything else is just torturing the curious, at least guide us to the papers, please (and thank you for the video)
@@yyeetmax2849 I always like to say intelligence extends in both directions. Some people are just average, but some are incredibly smart- and also sometimes the dumbest people you've ever met. I like to think I'm occasionally smart despite being mostly a dumbass lmao
@@somerandomcube hey kiddo, I didn’t steal anyones comment, I just said something that I thought would be funny, stop assuming that I stole someone comment just so you can get some likes by some likeminded, lame people 😂
This could be tested using something smaller. We could test to see if 100 blueberries vs 125 blueberries is noticed and figure out what the percentage threshold is. If monkeys care about blueberries, anyway.
That's no stuff animal. That's famous news host Tulio Triviño, from the super serious chilean news channel 31minutes, no wonder they were surprised that there weren't three, but in fact, two famous news host Tulio Triviño in the box.
From my marketing lessons I remember that also the human brain begins to have difficulties when the choice between products gets higher than 4. It also confuses us.
I wonder if Richard Adams knew this when he wrote Watership Down. It's built into the rabbit language that they can only count to four. There's no explanation given, but the popular theory is that the rabbits were counting on their paws, and they only have four paws.
I think it’s a pretty well-known concept in general. When I was a kid, I remember reading about how, if there are four or less items in a set, humans are able to determine its size just by looking at it. If it’s larger than that, we either have to count or go by its relative size. In other words, as long as we avoid counting, we’re really no better at this than other animals.
@@berlinflight_tv Unless they're in a specific pattern. People can recognise the "cross" shape of five dice dots and anything in that pattern, or the three-and-two pattern, and so on. But 8 scattered things vs 9 scattered things? Compared to a 2x4 grid vs a 2x2 grid _plus one?_ The pattern makes it easy.
"Imagine whats going on inside their head" Monke: I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOOUUUURRRR!!!
Not that I mind it, because usually it's slightly to quite different matter, but MinuteEarth usually makes videos on similar topics as those on recent other science channels. I have noticed it at least twice in the last few weeks.
Tbh a few science channels have discussed similar topics before, like vsauce, but its still interesting with the added info the channels before didnt mention
This reminds me of *Through the Looking Glass* when the chess queens host a math quiz: "Can you do Addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count." "She can't do Addition," the Red Queen interrupted.
I cannot help but think of Blackadder trying to teach Baldrick adding: Blackadder: If I have two beans, and then I add two more beans, what do I have? Baldrick: Some beans. Blackadder: Yes... and no. Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans; then I add two more beans. What does that make? Baldrick: A very small casserole.
@@le9038 Blackadder is a television series about Lord Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson (and his descendants, every new season is a new time period).
@@le9038 Google is an information retrieval simulator game. It allows you to look up things up and the game will provide simulated information based on your query. You gotta try it.
I guess I need to watch that. A PBS station in a neighboring city used to broadcast British shows during their fundraising and sometime in the early 90s they introduced "The Black Adder", but then aired a rather dull office sitcom set in a yellowish office with an angry boss with a very 70s-ish mustache. I've been stuck with the wrong impression of the show for 30 years until you corrected it just now. 🤦♂
That "island in the Caribbean" that he mentions is a small tiny island off the coast of south-eastern Puerto Rico called Cayo Santiago where a very studied group of Rhesus monkeys, around 1800 of them, have been under research since *1938* !! Researchers brought around 400 originally, so all their descendants have been tracked in detail to do all sorts of genetic and behavior research on them. It's amazing how they have also survived lots of really heavy hurricanes.
How much were the adults prepared to count? Because if they went into the experiment unprimed, I can imagine lots of them not bothering to count and just eyeballing it just like the other animals.
@@trla6505 well we eye Ball diferently than said animals We or at least i throw a random number when eyeballing and then Maybe try counting from there Rather than Just pile vs bigger pile
The thing is, adult humans will subconsciously count the apples, keeping an exact tally of them. When they see all the apples at once, their first thought will be to compare how many apples they see now to how many they counted. Animals and small children do not "count" the apples, as they do not have a number system to count with.
@@spindash64I think it is more about visual recognition. I would guess that a set of 4 and set of 5 would not be easily recognisable in a culture that does not use such pattern.
In the field of AI science we learned a similar concept: vocabulary vastly improves cognitive ability. To preface the field has a term called generalized intelligence. It is the abilty to connect and apply learning in one area to another unrelated area. Even as AI scientists developed methods to teach AI how to perform any singular task, they failed for the longest time to reach generalized intelligence. That is until they taught AI how to understand linguistics and vocabulary. Then AI took a jump leap towards generalized intelligence. We learned vocabulary is the key to connecting disparate concepts together and applying prior knowledge between the two. Human level Intelligence seems to be entirely based on linguistics. This suggests the advent of rudimentary language was what allowed early hominids to memorize their environment better than other animals and interact with it more intelligently. Thus linguistic ability was naturally selected for in hominids.
I saw some similar experiments with small children and coins. It was something like they valued physically bigger coins more than smaller ones regardless of their actual value. But the more interesting part was how when coins were lined up, they would think 4 coins spaced away were worth more than 4 identical coins lined up one touching the other. Or even how 4 coins were worth more than 5 identical coins, because the were spaced out in such a way that the length of the four-coin line was longer than the five-coin one. Makes you think about how our brains perceive and estimate numbers, sizes, values and such.
I've seen a video of that experiment with the spaced-out coins, but I'm not totally convinced the kids aren't just trying to guess what answer the experimenter is looking for and give them that. They show the kid one arrangement of coins, ask a question about it, change the arrangement, repeat the question, and then "obviously" the answer must be different, or they wouldn't have asked again, right? Even adults will sometimes give plainly incorrect answers to questions when they think they're being prompted to give those answers.
@@iang0thas someone who is autistic and has spent my entire life trying to figure out what is really being asked when I’m posed a question in school, THIS. THIS is absolutely what happened. The researches gives you two set ups. Four coins pushed together, and four spread apart. They then ask you which is worth more, suggesting they’re looking for two different answers. We shall now reason that the more spread apart ones are worth more because they have something more looking.
@@sociallyineptsnapper sometimes it frustrates me alot with scenarios like those, why people can't just say what their intentions are 😁the reason for not doing it is probably that it 'would affect the result', but anything that is done affects the result regardless!
@@sociallyineptsnapperSame! Before I understood that sometimes people ask trick questions, I just picked the answer that I saw the teachers derive "joy" from when they tested it on the students arouns me. That "joy" was then giggling at how "cute" and "dumb" kids are, but I didn't know that.
For anyone wondering and wanting to do more research on the topics: The abilities in question are called "Subitizing" for instinctively knowing (not counting) the exact amount of things ≤ 4 and "Approximate Number Sense" (ANS) for being able to differentiate large amount of grouped things, if the difference is big enough. :)
This is what I was thinking when I saw this title. I was thinking they can’t count past 4 for the same reason we can’t instantly count past like 5 or something. We have to manually do it at some point which they probably can’t do
Birds seem to be able to determine either smaller or greater numbers above 4. But not the actual numbers. And they also understand death. I have watched a Magpie funeral, where several birds repeatedly brought individual pieces of straw, and placed them on the body, and walked around the body making sad sounds. It moved me greatly.
I don't think being sad or even having a ritual means you understand death. Understanding death is realizing you'll die yourself, which no animal showed awareness of afaik.
@@xenotypos It’s debatable. I would say they do, they’re more likely to see it happening to animals in their same species. They try to escape it when they’re preyed upon. Some have funerals. Some of them take care of their dying. The only thing setting humans apart is more intricate linguistics. I don’t really buy that they cannot know simply because they cannot be told. Some things such as death can become self evident. It’s better to say we aren’t sure about that answer and havent proven yes or otherwise, imo.
@@HomeByTheSeas "They try to escape it when they’re preyed upon." Dude are you serious ? Survival instinct has nothing to do with it, what you're suggesting is that a fly or an ant is aware of death, since they try to escape it. Even you must realize how ridiculous that thought is. Being aware of death means being self-aware of your own existence as an individual, and comparing yourself to others. Most animals don't even pass the self-awareness tests that exist, so understanding they'll die too is out of question for them. That only leaves a few of them (elephants, dolphins/orcas/whales, monkeys, some birds...) for which it could be "debatable".
Took me half the video to realize that the background music is in 5+5+4. This Nathaniel Schroeder is incredible! Making this quite odd Rhythm an easy listening track is pure art!
There’s another educational video that was discussing this as it relates to Roman numerals and the symbols for writing numbers. Like basically at a certain point volume because a more important variable than the specific quantity.
2nd hand story, my friend used to do something similar with his dog. He’d put 1 treat, 2 treats, 3 treats… behind a screen and after give them 1 by 1 to her. At first she could only count to 3, after giving her 3, if there was a 4th, she’d stand up and not be sitting eagerly waiting for the next. With practice though, she learned to count to 6. Dunno if he was giving her verbal cues though, counting as he placed them, or not.
Not a biologist here, but I belive it is rather generally accepted fact that human senses (and I would reasonably expect that also animals) work on logarithmic scale instead of linear. For example touch: if I put a 100g and 110g weights into either of your hands, you would be able to tell them apart, but if it were 200 and 210 grams, you would be much less likely to suceed. Or hearing: when you take 3 tones you would percieve as having same interval 1->2 as 2->3, say an octave, you would find that their physical property frequency is actually in ration 1:2:4 (twice as much as before). It likely boils down to the fact that we do comparisons (this is twice as much as before so I will consider it a next step). Again, I do not do research in biology so feel free to tell me if I am wrong on anything.
Our sense of pitch would then be more like a parabola, because they suddenly fall off our hearing ability on either end. Same with colour, which is probably why we can distinguish green so well.
Similar thing happens in some human tribes that have been known for this phenomenon too, it's super interesting how nature forms our perception. They are simply unable to count beyond a certain threshold, referring to simply "a lot". Same with colours, a subset of humanity struggles to differentiate shades of blue from green but are perfectly capable to differentiate shades of blue that others can't.
I mean numerically speaking the difference between 3 and 4 is as big as the difference between 99 and 100. However the difference between 3 and 4 feels a LOT bigger. Thinking in proportions is often more useful than thinking in numbers. As an example if you look at diagrams in politics, they never start at 0, but at some arbitrary point in order to exagerate the point they're trying to make.
@@etuannoThose graphs are only exaggerating if 0 itself is not arbitrary. For example in temperature, 0 is arbitrary in Celsius and Fahrenheit. But a lot of people stubbornly tell me that climate change graphs are exaggerated if they don't start at 0.
@@demo2823 If you plot the graph by temperature change, then you can easily start at 0 (meaning no change). You could plot the graph starting at 0 Kelvin, then the difference won't be noticable, but its effects are.
Ok as a book nerd I love this because Watership Down was published in 1972 and one of the characters is literally named after the rabbit word for being the runt of too large a litter, Fiver. Richard Adams consulted a naturalist when he was writing his rabbit story and in the text he specifically mentions that rabbits can only count to four, with anything over five being considered hrair meaning "many/a thousand”. Xenofiction is made richer by understanding an animal’s subjective experience and understanding of its world!
Thanks! Should have scrolled down a bit before I posted my comment. I was just wondering whether he researched or just happened to put a correct detail in his book. When I read it in middle school, I just considered it a fun bit of world-building, demonstrating that the rabbits still aren't as smart as humans even though they're talking to each other. It didn't occur to me that it might have basis in fact.
@@seatbelttruck it’s one of my all time favorite books, not only was Richard Adams a lover of nature himself but he took his first book very seriously and wanted it to be as true to reality as he could make it. He struggled to get it published because of its subject matter and maturity, they wanted him to tone it down to better appeal to children and he insisted that he wasn’t making a story targeted towards maintaining innocence but rather to show the harsh realities of wild animals’ lives. He makes it clear that his rabbits know their place in the world as prey animals and gave them an entire culture and mythology to explain their existence and rationalize the horrors they endure. Naming and characterizing the rabbits after human comrades in arms that he knew while serving in the military really brings it home that they’re not gentle little sweet bunnies, but rather just like any wild animal they’re capable of being vicious and cruel to defend themselves and their own. They survive so much in the story that a human wouldn’t think a rabbit could be capable of achieving but Richard makes it clear that in the wild rabbits can swim, they’re clever enough to trick and evade predators, and they’re smart enough to do whatever they need to do to survive. It’s not a fantasy story, it’s as real as he could possibly make it!
There's a few things which are included in Watership Down which are based on the real behaviour of rabbits, but which are surprisingly difficult to find documentation about anywhere online. For example, the behaviour of rabbits leaving their warren if they're dying, in order to distract predators and prevent diseases spreading to other rabbits, is real. It's described in Watership Down, but I tried looking it up and couldn't find any academic sources describing it. I've seen it directly in nature though - a few years ago, late at night, I was walking with a friend past a grassy area where a lot of wild rabbits lived, and a rabbit with myxomatosis crawled up to us (I was able to diagnose it, also based on description from Watership Down). The rabbit wasn't just fearless or ignorant of us, it actually approached us when it heard us walking past, apparently intentionally. We took it to a vet to have it put down.
Isn't it true that humans can immediately see if there are 5 things, but when there are more they have to actually count them. Seems pretty relevant to this video?
That was definitely true for me when i worked as a cashier. Had to count really fast sometimes, 5 or less was just instinctive and with more i had to group them into 5s and math out the groups
I remember watching a documentary about an australian tribe whose language didn't have words for numbers a long time ago. They could enumerate things by citing their names, had words for "many", "few" and "none", but they didn't have numbers by themselves. Very interesting to see how counting is directly related to language.
And at the same time, some of these native tribes have dozens of words for natural phenomena that we can describe by only one word - such as types of snow, sand, wind, bushes, leaves, smells, animal features etc. It is all a matter of efficiency. Do you need algebra or calculus to survive in the Australian desert? No, but you surely have to know how to read footprints, predict weather, recognize poisonous food, create tools, build a shed or spot dangerous animals. You become smart in a way that is efficient for your needs. There also was an experiment, in which anthropologists asked members of a native tribe to "sort items logically", expecting them to sort the items according to size. The natives sorted them according to their purpose - putting bow next to meat etc. As this was a pioneering era of anthropology, the researchers considered the test as a lack of intelligence on part of the natives. Many years later, the same group of natives was visited by another team of researchers, who asked them "how would a crazy person sort these items". The natives sorted them by size.
Funnily enough, there are even human languages (such as Aka-Jeru (Andaman Islands) and Munduruku (Amazon)) that have no words for numbers above 3 (or sometimes even 2). The people who spoke them had no real need for number words, so all they had words for were "one," "two," "three" "a little" and "a lot."
@@edgargaebolg9307 Awesome - tell me more! In what sense? As in, the biggest number they have in the lang is just used to mean "a lot" (like the number 20 in Ainu), which is sort of a chicken-or-the-egg situation (did 20 come to mean a lot, or a lot come to mean 20)? Or just that eight is special?
@@penand_paper6661 In ancient Japan the number 8 was used that way but apparently there's not an official reason to why. Some theories I've found are: - 3 and 5 are the male and female numbers, so their sum 8 encompasses all. - The kanji 八 suggests infinite expansion. - It's homophonic with 弥 (ya), which means "more and more" - 4 is a holy number, so 8 is "double holy" and perfect
I wonder what not counting above a certain number does to birth rates. Once you pass the "many" point for children, do you keep having them until you are struggling to care for them all? Since there is no number that the society can decide is too many children to be reasonably looked after, so your only indicator is when you have gone too far for your personal circumstances. Or do they stop while they can still count them.
@@demo2823 They count them the same way they count coconuts or something. I really don't see why in the world this would stop them from having children, considering Amazon tribes try pretty hard to have kids, and even if they have six, they can recognize and name them like we can. Arguably, since a very active lifestyle can prevent ovulation, I'd say it's quite the opposite - when you have more what to count, then you invent numbers. When numbers are irrelevant, there's no need to invent them. Same reason why Ainu and Inuktitut (also spoken by hunter-gatherers) had no word for anything higher than 20 - at that point, who cares? It's a lot.
If the 25% difference is consistent if you add the apples to the pile invisibly but introduce them visibility one by one, it means that monkeys can count further than 4.
One of my university courses (I studied Exercise Sciences) required us to become sort of an expert in a very small field of research and they provided several topics for a group to present the next week. My subject was, 'Core Knowledge', or what knowledge is pre installed in our brain. Only a handful of studies were done at the time (2007), but one was quite interesting and relevant to this video. In this study, a group of scientists traveled to a reclusive tribe in the Amazon. After spending some time they found out that they only had words for 'one', 'two', 'three' and 'four'. Then there was their word for many. This tribe obviously developed a complex language, but never developed a system of math. Funny that this concept of four is in line with the core knowledge of many animals and toddlers.
I don't know about spiders, but rabbits have eye dilation/restriction and verbalized responses to cue when they're surprised (and no I don't mean talking specifically when I say verbalize haha).
As a pet rabbit owner, I have learned to read rabbit body language. Its fairly subtle but they have a reaction when they are surprised (or in the case of mine begging for food)
@@thatrandomguy8124Mine know how to look angry at the weather while sitting in the rain, just outside their perfectly good shelter. Stupid human, leaving the stupid weather on, when I wanted to get a stupid tan in some stupid sunshine...
i saw a video where the test for dogs was the person would throw balls into tall grass where one can't see them. then after a small number was thrown they would tell the dog to "fetch" and the dog would go looking for a ball. they'd repeat the fetch command but when they said to fetch a 4th time and only 3 were thrown the dog would just look at them and not get it because it knew there weren't any more left in the grass. but it didn't work for larger numbers
@@lompeluitenI always thought we could count to 5 instinctively. Middle, left end, right end, one off from left end, and one off from right end. You could point to any object in a row of 5 and I would instantly tell you its number. But on 6 or 7 I would get stuck for a split second.
Spotted hyenas can also-probably-count higher than 4; they do this to decide how to interact with rival clans, and male spotted hyenas will pick the clan with the least amount of other hyenas when choosing which one to join.
Very interesting video! But the thing that caught my attention the most is that you have drawn Tulio the chimpanzee from Chilean puppet show 31 Minutos
This is very interesting! it reminds me of the Numberphile videos with Brian Butterworth that were sharing research coming to a related conclusion, that both people and fish alike count groups sizes up to about 4 or 5 discretely, but larger groups are approximated as you describe!
its interesting how an animal "counts". I think a lot of this has to do with how we keep a beat in music. There are also human languages/cultures that didnt have numbers. its amazing on a small level like when your cat looks for another treat after only giving 2, while usually giving 3.
I mean, even though we can count to like seventy-three and know that's objectively more than seventy-two, in daily life we don't really care to count that much. Like if you gave me a pile of 73 jelly beans and 72 jelly beans, I won't be able to differentiate them, to me it's just "oh here's two big piles of jelly beans" unless you laid them out in a rectangle or some other regular pattern that made it clear there's an extra. If you told me there's 15 jelly beans I picture 3 groups of 5 jelly beans because I just sort of intuitively get 5 of something, but above 6 or 7? then it's in terms of smaller numbers
This explains the detail about rabbit society in _Watership Down_ having the same limits to their counting. Anything five or more, the characters called "hrair", usually translated to "thousand". It's one of my favorite books, but I'd wondered about that seemingly arbitrary restriction.
If counting is just "naming quantities", it seems to explain some mental biases. Like how 1 and 1000 seems more different than 1 million and 2 millions. Above some number we loss intuition of the underlying quantity and the number become nothing more than a stranger's name
There is (was?) a tribe in the Amazonia that had a similar situation. They would count until 4-5, but after that it was more like "many" or "a lot". There are some papers about them, quite interesting.
I think the reason we notice is because 1) we have more time to bother to count and 2) we've grown accustomed to living in an "exchange" community, where a number of something is traded (first objects/food then currency) for another, and knowing the difference to a certain level means you're less likely to get scammed or short-changed
We're also subject to this phenomenon, because number symbols stop being literal representations after 3 in many languages, and some languages didn't bother making nouns for bigger, meaningless numbers (see French "4*20+10” for 90).
Wow, a 261 seconds video that has 4 seconds of advertising at the begining and 57 at the end. A 23% of the video is advertising. If you don't have an adblocker (why you wouldn't???) the advertising could go up to over half of the content. The internet is becoming more and more like TV.
I keep telling them, "Count on your fingers", but then they start arguing with me about whether or not the thumb is a finger. It's a whole thing.
Count on your digits.
@@Novenae_CCG that sounds like an argument about toes being digits would follow
A long time I saw a guy from PNG showing how they count in base-20. 5 digits on one hand, and the joints and segments are another 5. The other hand and arm add up to 20. They then point at a digit/joint/segment to convey the "20's" place and so forth.
When the monkey said "Yeek yaak jeek", I felt he made a really good point
@@alanherlan3429 I did think about it, and I posted it anyway. I mean, why _not_ use your toes?
*The humans audibly gasped as the 300000 apples turned into 300001 apples*
That's almost as shocking as that time I looked up and there was one less star in the sky.
@@robertdunagan5807 - I almost dropped unconscious the last time that happened.
@@robertdunagan5807 the opposite will actually happen soon due to a white dwarf!!!!
Almost as bad as the time the speed of light went from 300,000 km/s to 300,001 km/s
@@catmacopter8545it already happened, you're just waiting for the light from it to reach earth
Still higher than Valve can
Not true. Valve just don't know number 3.
@@siimtulev1759you can’t count to three if you don’t know the number 3 so the monkeys win
1, 2, episode 1, episode 2, Alyx…
what??
If valve was owned by monkeys, we could get tf3
Ha! 🤣
I did a similar experiment with horses, which apparently cannot count at all despite the "hoof counting" trick. If you have an entire Gator full of oats, separated into feed bags or buckets, and the horse KNOWS all those oats are there, merely setting a container on the ground, or bringing it closer to the horse, or just setting it down slightly closer, results in the horse going after the container instead of the jackpot. It's like they have no idea whether amounts are greater or smaller, just whichever food is closer.
Similarly, but with a single notable difference, if you get two horses, the dominant one will always want whatever the other is eating, even if it' a significantly lesser amount. That one "dominant" horse will waste more time chasing off the "rival" and travelling between food supplies than actually eating for about ten minutes. Then they get hungry enough that they just eat whatever is in front of them at the time.
They do this because they are grazing animals, so relative size doesn't normally matter to them. Food is everywhere, and any other animal is a threat. A horse can be terrified by a small child, or a rabbit, because the horse is too flighty to know that those things couldn't possibly hurt them. They have no sense of their own size, except when it comes to other horses, and even then, it's dicey. A small horse can run off a big one if it is aggressive enough.
I didn't continue my experiments much further because I wasn't really conducting a proper experiment and I love horses too much to bother. But I still affectionately call them "stupids". Yes, they are intelligent enough to be trained very well, and they aren't completely clueless. I had a horse that figured out how to open doorknobs. But that same horse couldn't figure out that not EVERY part of the fence was a potential gate. He'd just stand at the fence, waiting for me to open it, when the gate was open twenty feet away. Beautiful creatures, kinda smart, and still dumb as a bag of hammers when compared to a human.
The gate thing reminds me of my chickens. I see so many people online saying that chickens being dumb is just a myth and they're actually very intelligent. Meanwhile I'm just watching mine throw themselves against the fence, desperately trying to get to the food on the other side, when the open gate they just left through 30 seconds ago is 2 feet to the left.
I once watched one get lost on a path I dug through deep snow with no forks or intersections and one turn.
@@ryankunst668 That is interesting but I have different observation with my chickens, although it depends on a chicken. i have a few that are dumb as hell, lets be real, those few are constantly on a 1% of a brainpower. But the rest (majority) of the flock will always run through the gate behind me, in order to get to the food. Couple days ago a hen jumped on me in order to get to the duck feed I was carrying, she is heavy enough that I wasn't able to hold the feeder, and hens were able to eat watered duck feed, that they love for whatever reason. Now I have to be really careful around them, because otherwise they will knock feeder out of my hands or will scratch my back jumping on me.
I also had a chicken that was able to open the gate - before I placed type of the door, they can't physically open without fingers- then she was sitting, allowing other chickens to run out, and finally she was escaping. Another hens forced me to put an extra net on a one part of chicken coop, otherwise they were using stairs and aviary roof as a place allowing them to escape from the coop and into neighbour garden - which has better grass in it, because no chickens. They still try to get through that net. But only those smarter ones, again, dumb members of the flock can barely understand the rooster signalling danger.
Man, horses are fking cool
Horses and cows are scared of red color; it signals blood! I had a red car and drove by, the horses were curious who's coming, their heads over the fence,looking. But when I came close, all horses turned their heads away, they didn't want to see the car. Verv much suppose, it was because of the color!
@@Nika44Just like human society !
This desperately needs the song "I can only count to four" as background music
That was the soundtrack to much of our production process!
That's so cool 😂
This remind me of Drowning Pool - "Let the bodies hit the floor"
@@alankoh807 There's a parody of that song but it's replaced with "I can only count to four", 'tis the reference!
th-cam.com/video/u8ccGjar4Es/w-d-xo.htmlsi=1SMaGWlkFcgvLkIY
I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUR
Okay, but what if you placed 6 small apples on the table, and then revealed 4 big ones?
There's a whole subset of experiments about just this thing - and the results are pretty interesting (though hard to control for all sorts of potential confounders)
@@MinuteEarth aaaannnddd??
saying there are experiments but not saying anything else is just torturing the curious, at least guide us to the papers, please
(and thank you for the video)
@yyeetmax2849 bro, there are references in the descriptions of the video for you to check out if you like.
@@ianvanancheta9005 thank you
(being curious doesn't mean not being a dumbass sometimes as you an see)
@@yyeetmax2849 I always like to say intelligence extends in both directions. Some people are just average, but some are incredibly smart- and also sometimes the dumbest people you've ever met. I like to think I'm occasionally smart despite being mostly a dumbass lmao
“If valve was owned by monkeys, we could get tf3”
Stolen comment
@@somerandomcube hey kiddo, I didn’t steal anyones comment, I just said something that I thought would be funny, stop assuming that I stole someone comment just so you can get some likes by some likeminded, lame people 😂
@@Billy426. doesn't mean that i didn't see the same thing already. Not as creative as you think, pissling.
Instead you get Deadlocked. The league version of Valve hero shooters…
@@somerandomcube pissling, how ironic the person saying that is the piss itself
"It takes 400000 apples to impress this human, for 12 seconds."
Took me 2 minutes to realize that any difference below 4 is also 25% or more.
I realized that in only a matter of seconds, it's really easy.
You just scroll downto the comment section, and read your comment :P
This could be tested using something smaller. We could test to see if 100 blueberries vs 125 blueberries is noticed and figure out what the percentage threshold is.
If monkeys care about blueberries, anyway.
@@kruks 100 and 125 has about 20% difference, so is 4 and 5.
@@rosverlegaspo6752 While 100 is 80% of 125, 125 is 125% of 100. The difference is 25, which can be expressed as both percentages.
@@rosverlegaspo6752 well assuming they expect to see 100 and instead 125 were revealed, there would be a 25% difference. (125-100)/100 = 25%
That's no stuff animal. That's famous news host Tulio Triviño, from the super serious chilean news channel 31minutes, no wonder they were surprised that there weren't three, but in fact, two famous news host Tulio Triviño in the box.
Tulio!
tUlio
-juanin juan harry
Yes! I knew I would not be the only one to know it. Túlio and the 31 minutes news are the best!
OMG 31 Minutos reference
kdjsha
We need to put this up top, for Tulio’s honor!
¡Tuuulio, estamos al aire!
“I CAN ONLY COUT TO 4
I CAN ONLY COUT TO 4
I CAN ONLY COUT TO
FOOOOUUUURRRRRRR”
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THAT LOL
“How many apples do you have”
“uhhhhhhh 4 x 1.25”
From my marketing lessons I remember that also the human brain begins to have difficulties when the choice between products gets higher than 4. It also confuses us.
I wonder if Richard Adams knew this when he wrote Watership Down. It's built into the rabbit language that they can only count to four. There's no explanation given, but the popular theory is that the rabbits were counting on their paws, and they only have four paws.
The mentioning of only having four paws! I forgot that bit, now I want to read it all over again 🩷
Yes! I was thinking about that. "Hrair" means "thousand" or "many" and "Hrair-roo" means little thousand/more than four or "Fiver"
I think it’s a pretty well-known concept in general.
When I was a kid, I remember reading about how, if there are four or less items in a set, humans are able to determine its size just by looking at it. If it’s larger than that, we either have to count or go by its relative size. In other words, as long as we avoid counting, we’re really no better at this than other animals.
@@berlinflight_tv Unless they're in a specific pattern. People can recognise the "cross" shape of five dice dots and anything in that pattern, or the three-and-two pattern, and so on. But 8 scattered things vs 9 scattered things? Compared to a 2x4 grid vs a 2x2 grid _plus one?_ The pattern makes it easy.
Bugs Bunny: I make Elmer count to four before that grenade blows up in his face. He's a MAROON.
"Imagine whats going on inside their head"
Monke: I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOOUUUURRRR!!!
3:29 hey, thoose toys look alike Tulio Triviño (from 31 minutos a chilean puppet cartoon)
THEY ARE!!!
@@RomanFalcon13 i know, i watch that cartoon, i speak native Uruguayan spanish
Tulio Triviño mentioned, Latinamericans summoned
@@martinparababire-mrrx-3448 jajajaaj, i am latinamerican
Is this similar to Be Smart's recent video about why all numbering systems created by humans usually use tick marks until 4 or 5?
I had thought about that as well lol
Not that I mind it, because usually it's slightly to quite different matter, but MinuteEarth usually makes videos on similar topics as those on recent other science channels. I have noticed it at least twice in the last few weeks.
Tbh a few science channels have discussed similar topics before, like vsauce, but its still interesting with the added info the channels before didnt mention
Exactly this!
@@prvashisht Is minute earth stealing content?
This reminds me of *Through the Looking Glass* when the chess queens host a math quiz:
"Can you do Addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?"
"I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count."
"She can't do Addition," the Red Queen interrupted.
Computer Scientist: "It's one"
The answer is "True".
I tried counting these, and then stopped myself when I realized I was just repeating “one and” instead of counting.
@@GregMoress it's true not 1, a comparison operation returns a boolean
well 10 sets of ones equals 10 i'm pretty sure.
to be fair a human probably wouldn't see the difference between 11 and 12 either.
Actually, that's also what happens with humans, we don't have a true notion of size sample, but we can abstract them quite well due to language.
Is it that they don’t notice or don’t care? Very different things.
Seems insignificant so they don’t pay attention or think about it.
I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOUUR!
1, 2, 5, 4 (5, 4)...
Mee count so poor....
Young siblings when we give them a perfect half of the m&ms and they still cant trust us and neither count:
1!
I CAN COUNT TO ONE!
2!
I CAN COUNT TO TWO!
3!
I CAN COUNT TO THREE!
4!
I CAN'T COUNT NO MOREEE!
THE ARE FOUR LIGHTS
One what comes after one
Two what comes after two
Three what comes after three
FOOOOUUUUUURRRRR!
I cannot help but think of Blackadder trying to teach Baldrick adding:
Blackadder: If I have two beans, and then I add two more beans, what do I have?
Baldrick: Some beans.
Blackadder: Yes... and no. Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans; then I add two more beans. What does that make?
Baldrick: A very small casserole.
What video game is this?
@@le9038 Blackadder is a television series about Lord Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson (and his descendants, every new season is a new time period).
@@le9038 Google is an information retrieval simulator game. It allows you to look up things up and the game will provide simulated information based on your query. You gotta try it.
I guess I need to watch that. A PBS station in a neighboring city used to broadcast British shows during their fundraising and sometime in the early 90s they introduced "The Black Adder", but then aired a rather dull office sitcom set in a yellowish office with an angry boss with a very 70s-ish mustache. I've been stuck with the wrong impression of the show for 30 years until you corrected it just now. 🤦♂
@@MerennulliI'm not convinced that you're talking about the same show.
3:22 is that tulio triviño? main face of the famous show 31 minutos?
That "island in the Caribbean" that he mentions is a small tiny island off the coast of south-eastern Puerto Rico called Cayo Santiago where a very studied group of Rhesus monkeys, around 1800 of them, have been under research since *1938* !! Researchers brought around 400 originally, so all their descendants have been tracked in detail to do all sorts of genetic and behavior research on them. It's amazing how they have also survived lots of really heavy hurricanes.
How much were the adults prepared to count? Because if they went into the experiment unprimed, I can imagine lots of them not bothering to count and just eyeballing it just like the other animals.
I think we can eyeball better then animals
@@trla6505 well we eye Ball diferently than said animals
We or at least i throw a random number when eyeballing and then Maybe try counting from there
Rather than Just pile vs bigger pile
The thing is, adult humans will subconsciously count the apples, keeping an exact tally of them. When they see all the apples at once, their first thought will be to compare how many apples they see now to how many they counted.
Animals and small children do not "count" the apples, as they do not have a number system to count with.
@@bywonlinei guess brains are way better at multiplication and division than addition and subtractkkn
@@spindash64I think it is more about visual recognition. I would guess that a set of 4 and set of 5 would not be easily recognisable in a culture that does not use such pattern.
So what does that make of Gabe Newell?? He can only count to 2.
scientists have been debating this question for centuries
Well, if a whole-lifeform can count to 4, a half-lifeform......
@@pplesandoranges that's crazy
@@pplesandoranges GENIUS
He can count to 4.
He goes straight from 2 to 4, and has no idea what 3 is.
In the field of AI science we learned a similar concept: vocabulary vastly improves cognitive ability. To preface the field has a term called generalized intelligence. It is the abilty to connect and apply learning in one area to another unrelated area. Even as AI scientists developed methods to teach AI how to perform any singular task, they failed for the longest time to reach generalized intelligence. That is until they taught AI how to understand linguistics and vocabulary. Then AI took a jump leap towards generalized intelligence.
We learned vocabulary is the key to connecting disparate concepts together and applying prior knowledge between the two. Human level Intelligence seems to be entirely based on linguistics.
This suggests the advent of rudimentary language was what allowed early hominids to memorize their environment better than other animals and interact with it more intelligently. Thus linguistic ability was naturally selected for in hominids.
3:37 LITTLE TULIO, 31 MINUTOS MENTIONED RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I saw some similar experiments with small children and coins. It was something like they valued physically bigger coins more than smaller ones regardless of their actual value. But the more interesting part was how when coins were lined up, they would think 4 coins spaced away were worth more than 4 identical coins lined up one touching the other. Or even how 4 coins were worth more than 5 identical coins, because the were spaced out in such a way that the length of the four-coin line was longer than the five-coin one.
Makes you think about how our brains perceive and estimate numbers, sizes, values and such.
I've seen a video of that experiment with the spaced-out coins, but I'm not totally convinced the kids aren't just trying to guess what answer the experimenter is looking for and give them that. They show the kid one arrangement of coins, ask a question about it, change the arrangement, repeat the question, and then "obviously" the answer must be different, or they wouldn't have asked again, right? Even adults will sometimes give plainly incorrect answers to questions when they think they're being prompted to give those answers.
@@iang0thas someone who is autistic and has spent my entire life trying to figure out what is really being asked when I’m posed a question in school, THIS. THIS is absolutely what happened. The researches gives you two set ups. Four coins pushed together, and four spread apart. They then ask you which is worth more, suggesting they’re looking for two different answers. We shall now reason that the more spread apart ones are worth more because they have something more looking.
@@sociallyineptsnapper sometimes it frustrates me alot with scenarios like those, why people can't just say what their intentions are 😁the reason for not doing it is probably that it 'would affect the result', but anything that is done affects the result regardless!
@@genesises yah 😅
@@sociallyineptsnapperSame! Before I understood that sometimes people ask trick questions, I just picked the answer that I saw the teachers derive "joy" from when they tested it on the students arouns me. That "joy" was then giggling at how "cute" and "dumb" kids are, but I didn't know that.
3:23 love that 31 minutos reference!
I screamed IS THAT TULIO out loud
Came here just to say this! ♥️
I'm happy i'm not alone here
Vengo a lo mismo. Estoy en shock!
Isn't it just a sock monkey? Tulio is literally one. I did have the same reaction tho, he looks like him but it might just be a coincidence
"One apple is a yummy snack. A million apples is a statistic." - Abraham Lincoln
Jailhouse lock is at it again
Clicked on this video just to find such a comment
3:25 Is that Tulio??? 🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱
Pensé lo mismo
El mismisimo Tulio Triviño
@@martinsilva2190 Túlio Trivinho in the Brazilian dub🇧🇷
Es el
For anyone wondering and wanting to do more research on the topics: The abilities in question are called "Subitizing" for instinctively knowing (not counting) the exact amount of things ≤ 4 and "Approximate Number Sense" (ANS) for being able to differentiate large amount of grouped things, if the difference is big enough. :)
This is what I was thinking when I saw this title. I was thinking they can’t count past 4 for the same reason we can’t instantly count past like 5 or something. We have to manually do it at some point which they probably can’t do
Birds seem to be able to determine either smaller or greater numbers above 4. But not the actual numbers.
And they also understand death. I have watched a Magpie funeral, where several birds repeatedly brought individual pieces of straw, and placed them on the body, and walked around the body making sad sounds. It moved me greatly.
I always thought humans were a mix of all animals and their knowledge.
@@gneu1527Theyre not
I don't think being sad or even having a ritual means you understand death. Understanding death is realizing you'll die yourself, which no animal showed awareness of afaik.
@@xenotypos It’s debatable.
I would say they do, they’re more likely to see it happening to animals in their same species. They try to escape it when they’re preyed upon.
Some have funerals. Some of them take care of their dying.
The only thing setting humans apart is more intricate linguistics.
I don’t really buy that they cannot know simply because they cannot be told. Some things such as death can become self evident.
It’s better to say we aren’t sure about that answer and havent proven yes or otherwise, imo.
@@HomeByTheSeas "They try to escape it when they’re preyed upon."
Dude are you serious ? Survival instinct has nothing to do with it, what you're suggesting is that a fly or an ant is aware of death, since they try to escape it. Even you must realize how ridiculous that thought is.
Being aware of death means being self-aware of your own existence as an individual, and comparing yourself to others. Most animals don't even pass the self-awareness tests that exist, so understanding they'll die too is out of question for them. That only leaves a few of them (elephants, dolphins/orcas/whales, monkeys, some birds...) for which it could be "debatable".
“I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4 I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4”
I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS COMMENT LOLOL 😂 I LOVE PSYCHOSTICK
I wasn't expecting to see a Tulio Triviño on MinuteEarth... What a nice surprise!
Yeah I was like wtf
Creo que en Estados Unidos es kind of a meme
TULIO TREVIÑO SALE AL FINAL 3:22
Took me half the video to realize that the background music is in 5+5+4. This Nathaniel Schroeder is incredible! Making this quite odd Rhythm an easy listening track is pure art!
this channel is really amazing and thought-provoking, i love watching and learning
0:13 neurones activated
I'm just happy I wasn't the only one that seen that
Monkey sees action
3:25 Tulio!
siiiiiiiiiiiiii
Estamos al aire!
There’s another educational video that was discussing this as it relates to Roman numerals and the symbols for writing numbers. Like basically at a certain point volume because a more important variable than the specific quantity.
2nd hand story, my friend used to do something similar with his dog. He’d put 1 treat, 2 treats, 3 treats… behind a screen and after give them 1 by 1 to her. At first she could only count to 3, after giving her 3, if there was a 4th, she’d stand up and not be sitting eagerly waiting for the next. With practice though, she learned to count to 6. Dunno if he was giving her verbal cues though, counting as he placed them, or not.
Not a biologist here, but I belive it is rather generally accepted fact that human senses (and I would reasonably expect that also animals) work on logarithmic scale instead of linear. For example touch: if I put a 100g and 110g weights into either of your hands, you would be able to tell them apart, but if it were 200 and 210 grams, you would be much less likely to suceed. Or hearing: when you take 3 tones you would percieve as having same interval 1->2 as 2->3, say an octave, you would find that their physical property frequency is actually in ration 1:2:4 (twice as much as before). It likely boils down to the fact that we do comparisons (this is twice as much as before so I will consider it a next step). Again, I do not do research in biology so feel free to tell me if I am wrong on anything.
Our sense of pitch would then be more like a parabola, because they suddenly fall off our hearing ability on either end. Same with colour, which is probably why we can distinguish green so well.
Similar thing happens in some human tribes that have been known for this phenomenon too, it's super interesting how nature forms our perception. They are simply unable to count beyond a certain threshold, referring to simply "a lot". Same with colours, a subset of humanity struggles to differentiate shades of blue from green but are perfectly capable to differentiate shades of blue that others can't.
I mean numerically speaking the difference between 3 and 4 is as big as the difference between 99 and 100. However the difference between 3 and 4 feels a LOT bigger.
Thinking in proportions is often more useful than thinking in numbers.
As an example if you look at diagrams in politics, they never start at 0, but at some arbitrary point in order to exagerate the point they're trying to make.
@@etuannoThose graphs are only exaggerating if 0 itself is not arbitrary. For example in temperature, 0 is arbitrary in Celsius and Fahrenheit. But a lot of people stubbornly tell me that climate change graphs are exaggerated if they don't start at 0.
@@demo2823 If you plot the graph by temperature change, then you can easily start at 0 (meaning no change).
You could plot the graph starting at 0 Kelvin, then the difference won't be noticable, but its effects are.
3:17 "What is this sorcery!
I mean... Goo goo Ga ga!"
[psychostick intensifies]
Ok as a book nerd I love this because Watership Down was published in 1972 and one of the characters is literally named after the rabbit word for being the runt of too large a litter, Fiver. Richard Adams consulted a naturalist when he was writing his rabbit story and in the text he specifically mentions that rabbits can only count to four, with anything over five being considered hrair meaning "many/a thousand”. Xenofiction is made richer by understanding an animal’s subjective experience and understanding of its world!
This was my first thought as well! There must have been some inkling then, in research or anecdotally that 4 is the “magic” number
Thanks! Should have scrolled down a bit before I posted my comment. I was just wondering whether he researched or just happened to put a correct detail in his book. When I read it in middle school, I just considered it a fun bit of world-building, demonstrating that the rabbits still aren't as smart as humans even though they're talking to each other. It didn't occur to me that it might have basis in fact.
@@seatbelttruck it’s one of my all time favorite books, not only was Richard Adams a lover of nature himself but he took his first book very seriously and wanted it to be as true to reality as he could make it. He struggled to get it published because of its subject matter and maturity, they wanted him to tone it down to better appeal to children and he insisted that he wasn’t making a story targeted towards maintaining innocence but rather to show the harsh realities of wild animals’ lives. He makes it clear that his rabbits know their place in the world as prey animals and gave them an entire culture and mythology to explain their existence and rationalize the horrors they endure. Naming and characterizing the rabbits after human comrades in arms that he knew while serving in the military really brings it home that they’re not gentle little sweet bunnies, but rather just like any wild animal they’re capable of being vicious and cruel to defend themselves and their own. They survive so much in the story that a human wouldn’t think a rabbit could be capable of achieving but Richard makes it clear that in the wild rabbits can swim, they’re clever enough to trick and evade predators, and they’re smart enough to do whatever they need to do to survive. It’s not a fantasy story, it’s as real as he could possibly make it!
There's a few things which are included in Watership Down which are based on the real behaviour of rabbits, but which are surprisingly difficult to find documentation about anywhere online.
For example, the behaviour of rabbits leaving their warren if they're dying, in order to distract predators and prevent diseases spreading to other rabbits, is real. It's described in Watership Down, but I tried looking it up and couldn't find any academic sources describing it. I've seen it directly in nature though - a few years ago, late at night, I was walking with a friend past a grassy area where a lot of wild rabbits lived, and a rabbit with myxomatosis crawled up to us (I was able to diagnose it, also based on description from Watership Down). The rabbit wasn't just fearless or ignorant of us, it actually approached us when it heard us walking past, apparently intentionally. We took it to a vet to have it put down.
@@nathangamble125that’s fascinating, thank you for sharing and for your compassion to end the suffering for the poor rabbit.
1
WHAT COMES AFTER 1
2
WHAT COMES AFTER 2
3
WHAT COMES AFTER 3
FOOUUUURRR
I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4!
3:28 Tulio Triviño?
Aliens: "Humans are simple creatures, and can't comprehend figures greater than a billion." 😂
Isn't it true that humans can immediately see if there are 5 things, but when there are more they have to actually count them. Seems pretty relevant to this video?
Probably. Magicians use these principles too.
That was definitely true for me when i worked as a cashier. Had to count really fast sometimes, 5 or less was just instinctive and with more i had to group them into 5s and math out the groups
Yeah, five and six are about the highest numbers that you can do that with, in my experience
In my experience it’s 4 not 5.
@@Niko-zf5ml perhaps you are a monkey
3:24 Missed opportunity for a "Two-lio" joke
The monkey seeing me eat one apple and see I actually ate a apple sized worm:
I remember watching a documentary about an australian tribe whose language didn't have words for numbers a long time ago. They could enumerate things by citing their names, had words for "many", "few" and "none", but they didn't have numbers by themselves. Very interesting to see how counting is directly related to language.
And at the same time, some of these native tribes have dozens of words for natural phenomena that we can describe by only one word - such as types of snow, sand, wind, bushes, leaves, smells, animal features etc. It is all a matter of efficiency. Do you need algebra or calculus to survive in the Australian desert? No, but you surely have to know how to read footprints, predict weather, recognize poisonous food, create tools, build a shed or spot dangerous animals. You become smart in a way that is efficient for your needs.
There also was an experiment, in which anthropologists asked members of a native tribe to "sort items logically", expecting them to sort the items according to size. The natives sorted them according to their purpose - putting bow next to meat etc. As this was a pioneering era of anthropology, the researchers considered the test as a lack of intelligence on part of the natives. Many years later, the same group of natives was visited by another team of researchers, who asked them "how would a crazy person sort these items". The natives sorted them by size.
Funnily enough, there are even human languages (such as Aka-Jeru (Andaman Islands) and Munduruku (Amazon)) that have no words for numbers above 3 (or sometimes even 2). The people who spoke them had no real need for number words, so all they had words for were "one," "two," "three" "a little" and "a lot."
On a similar note I've heard of how some older cultures used the number 8 for "a lot" or "all" because it's two fours
@@edgargaebolg9307 Awesome - tell me more!
In what sense? As in, the biggest number they have in the lang is just used to mean "a lot" (like the number 20 in Ainu), which is sort of a chicken-or-the-egg situation (did 20 come to mean a lot, or a lot come to mean 20)?
Or just that eight is special?
@@penand_paper6661 In ancient Japan the number 8 was used that way but apparently there's not an official reason to why. Some theories I've found are:
- 3 and 5 are the male and female numbers, so their sum 8 encompasses all.
- The kanji 八 suggests infinite expansion.
- It's homophonic with 弥 (ya), which means "more and more"
- 4 is a holy number, so 8 is "double holy" and perfect
I wonder what not counting above a certain number does to birth rates. Once you pass the "many" point for children, do you keep having them until you are struggling to care for them all? Since there is no number that the society can decide is too many children to be reasonably looked after, so your only indicator is when you have gone too far for your personal circumstances. Or do they stop while they can still count them.
@@demo2823 They count them the same way they count coconuts or something.
I really don't see why in the world this would stop them from having children, considering Amazon tribes try pretty hard to have kids, and even if they have six, they can recognize and name them like we can.
Arguably, since a very active lifestyle can prevent ovulation, I'd say it's quite the opposite - when you have more what to count, then you invent numbers. When numbers are irrelevant, there's no need to invent them.
Same reason why Ainu and Inuktitut (also spoken by hunter-gatherers) had no word for anything higher than 20 - at that point, who cares? It's a lot.
"I can only count to four. I can only count to four. I can only count to FOOOOOUUURRRRRRR."
- Psychostick
ONE!
what comes after one?
TWO!
what comes after two?
THREE!
what comes after three?
FFFOUUUURRRR!!!!!👹😈
The sad monkey on the picture front thing makes me happy.
🎵I can only count to four. One, two, five four. I can't count no more.🎵
TULIO REFERENCE
If the 25% difference is consistent if you add the apples to the pile invisibly but introduce them visibility one by one, it means that monkeys can count further than 4.
"I can only count to four, i can only count to four, i can only count to 🥁 🥁 FOOOOOOOUR!!"- psychostick
3:22 Tulio Triviño!!!
This is honestly really interesting nice job.
TULIO TRIVIÑO MENTIONED!!!! TULIO TRIVIÑO MENTIONED!!!! TULIO TRIVIÑO MENTIONED!!!! GREATEST VIDEO EVER
Be smart has a video on a very similar topic! Definitely check that one out it was really good
I kept thinking of the metal song "I can only count to four!" which is a parody of "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor"
One of my university courses (I studied Exercise Sciences) required us to become sort of an expert in a very small field of research and they provided several topics for a group to present the next week. My subject was, 'Core Knowledge', or what knowledge is pre installed in our brain. Only a handful of studies were done at the time (2007), but one was quite interesting and relevant to this video. In this study, a group of scientists traveled to a reclusive tribe in the Amazon. After spending some time they found out that they only had words for 'one', 'two', 'three' and 'four'. Then there was their word for many. This tribe obviously developed a complex language, but never developed a system of math. Funny that this concept of four is in line with the core knowledge of many animals and toddlers.
Well, let's look at this: a grocery bag full of 26 apples.
No, I lied, it is 25. You dropped one on the way to the car.
0:53 - Instead of saying the monkey can count, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that they have some concept of object permanence?
Scientists call it an "object tracking system" and it's definitely needed - along with the so-called "approximate number system" that they use
If they lacked object permanence the number of apples wouldn't affect whether or not they're surprised.
I can’t imagine how a surprised spider or rabbit looks like. How can we tell, that the animal was surprised in this experiment?
They'll dissect their brains and test for the surprise hormone
I don't know about spiders, but rabbits have eye dilation/restriction and verbalized responses to cue when they're surprised (and no I don't mean talking specifically when I say verbalize haha).
As a pet rabbit owner, I have learned to read rabbit body language. Its fairly subtle but they have a reaction when they are surprised (or in the case of mine begging for food)
@@thatrandomguy8124Mine know how to look angry at the weather while sitting in the rain, just outside their perfectly good shelter. Stupid human, leaving the stupid weather on, when I wanted to get a stupid tan in some stupid sunshine...
I think monkeys have solved the Sorites paradox for themselves…
Clearly this suggests the toddler's main diet of anthropomorphic bears, slighlty clothed.
i saw a video where the test for dogs was the person would throw balls into tall grass where one can't see them. then after a small number was thrown they would tell the dog to "fetch" and the dog would go looking for a ball. they'd repeat the fetch command but when they said to fetch a 4th time and only 3 were thrown the dog would just look at them and not get it because it knew there weren't any more left in the grass. but it didn't work for larger numbers
I tought so. I just tought of that experiment. Because I know humans can also instintivly count 4 objects, without actually counting.
@@lompeluitenI always thought we could count to 5 instinctively. Middle, left end, right end, one off from left end, and one off from right end. You could point to any object in a row of 5 and I would instantly tell you its number. But on 6 or 7 I would get stuck for a split second.
3:22 Is that... is that Tulio Treviño? Boy, even I was surprised.
Spotted hyenas can also-probably-count higher than 4; they do this to decide how to interact with rival clans, and male spotted hyenas will pick the clan with the least amount of other hyenas when choosing which one to join.
Very interesting video! But the thing that caught my attention the most is that you have drawn Tulio the chimpanzee from Chilean puppet show 31 Minutos
Performing magic tricks for spiders?? Hehehehe!
Now I'm imagining the spider version of Statler and Waldorf.
"Boo! It's up his sleeve!"
now I feel an overwhelming urge to sketch what that might look like :)
@@MinuteEarthYes please!
“I can only count to 4!”
“I can only count to 4!”
“I can only count to fouuuuuuurrrrrr!!!”
You can count to 24? Not bad.
I need to see spiders reacting to magic tricks
3:24 Want to count past four? You’re going to need today’s sponsor, Brilliant.
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
This is very interesting! it reminds me of the Numberphile videos with Brian Butterworth that were sharing research coming to a related conclusion, that both people and fish alike count groups sizes up to about 4 or 5 discretely, but larger groups are approximated as you describe!
“There are four lights!”
its interesting how an animal "counts". I think a lot of this has to do with how we keep a beat in music. There are also human languages/cultures that didnt have numbers. its amazing on a small level like when your cat looks for another treat after only giving 2, while usually giving 3.
I'm curious what would happen if you performed the trick for Piraha speakers (their language doesn't have numbers).
3:05
Toddlers are monkeys CONFIRMED!!
I mean, even though we can count to like seventy-three and know that's objectively more than seventy-two, in daily life we don't really care to count that much. Like if you gave me a pile of 73 jelly beans and 72 jelly beans, I won't be able to differentiate them, to me it's just "oh here's two big piles of jelly beans" unless you laid them out in a rectangle or some other regular pattern that made it clear there's an extra. If you told me there's 15 jelly beans I picture 3 groups of 5 jelly beans because I just sort of intuitively get 5 of something, but above 6 or 7? then it's in terms of smaller numbers
Here's why humans would count the difference between those jellybean piles:
Siblings.
This explains the detail about rabbit society in _Watership Down_ having the same limits to their counting. Anything five or more, the characters called "hrair", usually translated to "thousand". It's one of my favorite books, but I'd wondered about that seemingly arbitrary restriction.
Frieza: HELLO MONKEY
If counting is just "naming quantities", it seems to explain some mental biases. Like how 1 and 1000 seems more different than 1 million and 2 millions. Above some number we loss intuition of the underlying quantity and the number become nothing more than a stranger's name
"I can only count to four. I can only count to four. I can only count to fooooooooour"
So it's like aliens presenting a heap of sand, and revealing a heap of sand. And the aliens wonder why we couldn't notice 67 sand particles missing.
Me, a human, when there are 757473 grains of rice in the bag instead of the advertised 757472:
:O
There is (was?) a tribe in the Amazonia that had a similar situation. They would count until 4-5, but after that it was more like "many" or "a lot". There are some papers about them, quite interesting.
I think the reason we notice is because 1) we have more time to bother to count and 2) we've grown accustomed to living in an "exchange" community, where a number of something is traded (first objects/food then currency) for another, and knowing the difference to a certain level means you're less likely to get scammed or short-changed
We're also subject to this phenomenon, because number symbols stop being literal representations after 3 in many languages, and some languages didn't bother making nouns for bigger, meaningless numbers (see French "4*20+10” for 90).
Sucks when you can't watch a 4 minute video without getting 1 minute of advertising. Guess that's that 25% again
is that tulio? jajajaja, viva chile
Wow, a 261 seconds video that has 4 seconds of advertising at the begining and 57 at the end. A 23% of the video is advertising. If you don't have an adblocker (why you wouldn't???) the advertising could go up to over half of the content. The internet is becoming more and more like TV.
It's not difficult to just stop the video when the sponsorship segment starts.