About dogs
1) I mean literally recognizing words, remembering them and associating them with items. You show dog something, pronounce its name, and the dog remembers it.
About mathematician dog: I don't believe it at all. I'm writing an essay about history of mathematical symbols, and you know what ? It took _humans_ thousands of years to grasp the concept of number. They were capable of "
counting"
before, as below:
"
from small finger of left hand to nose"
"
from small finger of left hand to third toe of right foot"
etc. The history of number concept was long and full of dead ends. Humans, and pretty much other animals can't recognize any amount higher than 4 without additional help (tokens, carvings, etc). You can't do it, neither. You start counting, and thats just like dropping one stone for each passing sheep (shepherds).
In ancient times the simplest, and only way to compare amounts was to find plenty of tokens of some kind, drop/take/whatever a token for each counted A object... then drop/whatever a token for each B object and see how many left there are.
And evidence of this is left in many languages, including polish, (pierwSZY, druGI, trzeCI, czwarTY, piaTY, TY, TY...) english (firST, secoND, thiRD, fourTH, fifTH, sixTH, TH, TH, TH...)
This system is used even today, in civilised (wearing more clothes than others, according to T.Pratchett) countries.. for activities like counting votes etc. And usually you group those tokens/drawn lines into groups of five or sth, because your eye/brain cant recognize more easily.
Saying that a dog can so easily count, using his brain only, is unbelievable (literally) for me. I bet you couldn't ask him to "
count"
from 1 to 20, for a start (by this I mean barking once, then twice, thrice, four times...).
I even don't believe they actually had 20 hand signs to communicate. How would you teach a dog to bark 20 times ? Can't say.
Most probably the man had just two: start barking and stop barking.
About monkeys:
Yes, I read about Koko, too.
But realise that often scientists don't even know what should count as an answer, and it's found only by coincidence.
One man was teaching a chimpansee hand signs with help of pictures of various fruits. Then suddenly, she (the chimp) started to show pictures randomly, without any sense, apparently. The scientist was disappointed and thought it was all in vain. But he placed some fruits before chimp, and... she took only ones whose pictures she pointed at.
It wasn't a response to scientist's question. It was a
demand .
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http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051128/adams_01.shtml
