Musings: Elephants are Mathematicians

Read an interesting article.

Asian elephants can do mathematics, proving their skill at addition in an experiment with their favourite food, a Japanese researcher said on Monday.

One elephant was 87 per cent correct and the other 69 per cent right in months of addition exercises involving single digits, according to Naoko Irie of the University of Tokyo.

In one test, researchers dropped three apples into one bucket and five into another bucket and then added two apples to each.

Five times out of six, Ashya, a 30-year-old female elephant at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, chose the bucket with seven apples rather than five although she could not see or feel the inside of the containers.

The other elephant, 38-year-old Mito from the western city of Kyoto, was also right five times in a test involving oranges. Irie, a doctoral candidate in cognition and behavioural science, said she was surprised at the elephants' mathematics skills.

"I couldn't believe it at first," Irie said. "They could instantly compare numbers like six and five." Each animal was tested using their favourite food. Elephants have roughly the same life span as humans.

Many animals are known to be able to choose the bigger of two numbers. But the two elephants maintained a good showing with larger numbers and slim margins. Ashya was correct in five out of six tests on the addition of five-plus-one and three-plus-four, which means the margin of only one apple.

Mito was four times right on the same assignment, she said.

The elephants are doing all these complicated maths of 6 and 7, probably because the sums involve apples and oranges. If we try such sums with our kids (and Adults ?) here with Dosa and Parota and Gulab Jamun, we will also do better. Whether the answer of addition will be correct or not, we will pick up the plate which has more Parotas or the bowl with bigger Gulab Jamuns for sure !

Coming back to Elephants, next time if I see a very thoughtful elephant going through the forests, I will know it is trying to do some mental maths about "if the diameter of this tree is 15 cm, what will be its volume ?" or "if the rate of vehicles going through our forests is 5 in every 3 minutes, how many vehicles pass through in a day ?" or something similar !

Don't tell me now that you didn't do the Maths homework !!