Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1893 — ANIMALS CAN COUNT. [ARTICLE]

ANIMALS CAN COUNT.

Crows tbe Most Accomplished Arithmeticians and Dogs are Next. A Russian pbysioian has been making some curious experiences to find out bow far animals can count. He declares that the crow can count up to ten, and is thereby superior in arithmetic to certain Polynesian tribes of men who cannot get beyond five or six. The doctor had a dog, which was accustomed to bury the bones it found, each one m a separate place in the garden. One day, wishing to test the animals power of counting, the master gave it no less than twenty-six bones, which were all buried one after another in special hiding places. The next day the dog was given uo more bones, and he was forced to dig up the old ones. Without any hesitation he recovered ten and then came to a stop. After whining and running about as if in a state of great perplexity a new idea seemed to enter the canine brain, and again the dog began to dig up the hidden bones, this time adding nine to the total before his memory again failed him. Then there was a second period of whining and perplexity, after which the seven remaining bones were found with some difficulty. The doctor concluded from this that twenty-six was too large a number for the dog to take in all at once, and that he had been obliged to remember the bones, as it were, in three shorter series. The cat, it would seem, is even less than an arithmetician than the dog, not being able to count as far as ten.

Before giving his cat its regular piece of meat the doctor would put it under the animal’s nose and then withdraw it five times in succession, and it was only the sixth time that he would give the cat the morsel. This number was repeated every dny until tho cat became perfectly accustomed to waiting five times, but would spring forward of its own accord at the sixth presentation. Having thus demonstrated that pussy was able to remember up to six, the doctor tried to seven, but without success. As soon as he attempted to perform the experiment with higher numbers the cat became confused and would jump forward for the meat at the wrong time. The number six. therefore, would seem to be the limit of this oat’s power of counting. Not less interesting were similar experiments with horses. In the village of Pekoe, the doctor found a peasant’s horse which was used for ploughing, and which had aoquired the habit of counting the furrows and stopping for a rest regularly at the twentieth. So confident was the ploughman of the accuracy of his horse's calculations that at the end of the day he used to estimate the amount of work done, not by counting the furrows himself, but by simply remembering the number of times nis horse had stopped to rest. In another village the doctor found a horse which could count the mile posts along the way and which had been trained by his master to stop for feed whenever they had covered twenty-five verstes. One day they tried the horse over a road where three false mile posts had been put up in between the real ones, and sure enough, the horse, deceived by this trick, stopped for his oats at the end of twenty-verstes instead of going the usual twenty five. The saae horse was accustomed to being fed every day at the stroke of noon. The dootor observed that whenever the clock struck any hour the horse would stop and prick up his ears as if counting. II he heard twelve he would trot of contentedly to be fed, but if there were fewer strokes than twelve he would go on working resignedly. The experiment was made of striking twelve strokes at the wrong time, whereupon the horse started for his oats in spite of the fact that he had been fed an hour before. This shows a litte knowledge may be bad for horses as well as for men. —[New York Telegram.