VIDEOS

Back
Monkey Math

Monkey Math

Jessica Cantlon, lead author of a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, describes her research on how baboons can discriminate between different quantities of objects. 

Eight olive baboons between the ages of four and 14 were more likely to choose the greater number of peanuts if the relative difference between two counts was larger - known as the analog system. 

The authors conclude that this system is probably the ancestral mechanism for comparing quantities in primates, while the ability to count might be an evolutionarily recent trait unique to humans.

Read the paper here: http://www.frontiersin.org/Comparative_Psychology/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00253/abstract

Keywords: numerosity, Primates, baboons, Object-file, Analog magnitude

Posted by: Frontiers in Psychology

Posted on: 13 May 2013

Back

You are in

Science

View All Videos
Other Videos By This User
People also looked at