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Fish possess rudimentary math skills

Iscariot

Iscariot

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Aug 16, 2007
2,627
3
Toronteazy
I don't know about you, but this makes me question everything.


Fish can count to four - but no higher
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Fish can count, according to scientists, who have found that North American mosquito fish have the ability to count up to four.

Previously it was known that fish could tell big shoals from small ones, but researchers have now found that they have a limited ability to count how many other fish are nearby.

This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability.​

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I'll never have faith in mythbusters. I watched one episode where they were trying to see whether or not a giant whirlpool would be capable of swallowing a huge barge. They just threw some crap together that was so blatantly inaccurate (from a fluid mechanics perspective) and then they got the most ridiculous results and didn't even question the validity of their experiment.

Don't be fooled, they are not engineers. They are tinkerers.
 
MBHockey said:
Don't be fooled, they are not engineers. They are tinkerers.
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definitely, but they're doing a LOT more than any of us are.

you may have only seen part of one episode, they usually start with scale models, sometimes rough, just to get an idea of the direction to go, or if the full size will be feasible, etc. i tivo mythbusters every day, i know exactly which episode you are referring to and have seen it several times.

i've had moments where i question some things they do, but overall they do the best they can given the situation. they can't absolutely recreate everything, because a lot of it is dangerous. in the case of movie myths, the plywood cutout shapes of people around a fridge with a grenade in it obviously isn't real life recreation, but it certain was enough to display the sort of damage that would actually occur if it wasn't computer generated.
 
Re: Mythbusters

Maybe, but Zombie Feynman says they are still helping bring us into a more scientific world:

unscientific.png
 
argghh... mythbusters is sorta like porn - they both are entertaining and deceiving at the same time, and they also don't have to make much sense. i remember my orgo lab partner got busted for using mythbusters as a reference. i tried to stop her, but she said, "wikipedia says mythbusters uses scientific method." (yes, i tried to convince her that wiki's pretty sketchy as well...)
 
Abstract said:
Who cares? They'll just forget 3 seconds later.
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I don't know what Myth Busters is but I can guess ... no ... serious white coats have disproved this a while ago. I think they found that fish could remember caches of food and return to them 6 months later.
 
Henri Gaudier said:
I don't know what Myth Busters is but I can guess ... no ... serious white coats have disproved this a while ago. I think they found that fish could remember caches of food and return to them 6 months later.
Click to expand...
And how do you explain salmon being able to remember the rivers of their spawning after a lifetime?
 
Quote:
And how do you explain salmon being able to remember the rivers of their spawning after a lifetime?

Sorry .. I didn't make myself clear as I was rushing ... the white coats stopped their experiment at 6 months and so no maximum memory was ever determined. I don't hold at all with "sciences" conceit of animals but instead hold them in great regard. When I read, say a biography of Sitting Bull, and in it he says that a bird literally spoke to him - a large part of me believes it. In one way, that's why I'm vegan.
 
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