Why Monkeys Can Only Count To Four
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- Опубликовано: 8 фев 2025
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There’s an island in the Caribbean where David used to perform magic tricks for monkeys. And it was super cool because it suggested that they have the ability to count! (but only up to four)
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Approximate number system: A cognitive system that supports the estimation of the magnitude of a group without relying on language or symbols.
Violation of expectancy looking time measure: A technique used to determine if subjects were surprised by an outcome of an experiment based on the idea that surprising outcomes resulted in longer looking times.
Cross-species comparison: Comparisons across species that differ in cognitive character.
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David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Lizah van der Aart & Arcadi Garcia i Rius | Storyboard Artists
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REFERENCES
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Nieder, A. (2019). A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number Instinct. The MIT Press.
Hauser, M. D., & Carey, S. (2003). Spontaneous representations of small numbers of objects by rhesus macaques: examinations of content and format. Cognitive psychology, 47(4), 367-401. doi.org/10.101...
Abramson, J. Z., Hernández-Lloreda, V., Call, J., & Colmenares, F. (2011). Relative quantity judgments in South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens). Animal cognition, 14(5), 695-706. doi.org/10.100...
Rodríguez, R.L., Briceño, R.D., Briceño-Aguilar, E. et al. Nephila clavipes spiders (Araneae: Nephilidae) keep track of captured prey counts: testing for a sense of numerosity in an orb-weaver. Anim Cogn 18, 307-314 (2015). doi.org/10.100...
Santos, L. R., Sulkowski, G. M., Spaepen, G. M., & Hauser, M. D. (2002). Object individuation using property/kind information in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Cognition, 83(3), 241-264. doi.org/10.101... 
Наука
I keep telling them, "Count on your fingers", but then they start arguing with me about whether or not the thumb is a finger. It's a whole thing.
Count on your digits.
@@Novenae_CCG that sounds like an argument about toes being digits would follow
A long time I saw a guy from PNG showing how they count in base-20. 5 digits on one hand, and the joints and segments are another 5. The other hand and arm add up to 20. They then point at a digit/joint/segment to convey the "20's" place and so forth.
When the monkey said "Yeek yaak jeek", I felt he made a really good point
@@alanherlan3429 I did think about it, and I posted it anyway. I mean, why _not_ use your toes?
*The humans audibly gasped as the 300000 apples turned into 300001 apples*
That's almost as shocking as that time I looked up and there was one less star in the sky.
@@robertdunagan5807 - I almost dropped unconscious the last time that happened.
@@robertdunagan5807 the opposite will actually happen soon due to a white dwarf!!!!
Almost as bad as the time the speed of light went from 300,000 km/s to 300,001 km/s
@@catmacopter8545it already happened, you're just waiting for the light from it to reach earth
“I CAN ONLY COUT TO 4
I CAN ONLY COUT TO 4
I CAN ONLY COUT TO
FOOOOUUUURRRRRRR”
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THAT LOL
This played in my brain as soon as I read the title
THATS WHAT I THOUGHTTTT
Your pfp used to be my old wallpaper
That’s the first thing I thought when I clicked on this video lol
Still higher than Valve can
Not true. Valve just don't know number 3.
@@siimtulev1759you can’t count to three if you don’t know the number 3 so the monkeys win
1, 2, episode 1, episode 2, Alyx…
what??
If valve was owned by monkeys, we could get tf3
Ha! 🤣
"It takes 400000 apples to impress this human, for 12 seconds."
I am heavy fruits guy and this is my orange
WHO TOUCHED SASHA?!?!
That one math problem
"I am many apples man. And this, is my apple."
@@parallellia1509 "It weighs 100 grams and offers nutrition of 52 calories per serving."
Took me 2 minutes to realize that any difference below 4 is also 25% or more.
I realized that in only a matter of seconds, it's really easy.
You just scroll downto the comment section, and read your comment :P
This could be tested using something smaller. We could test to see if 100 blueberries vs 125 blueberries is noticed and figure out what the percentage threshold is.
If monkeys care about blueberries, anyway.
@@kruks 100 and 125 has about 20% difference, so is 4 and 5.
@@rosverlegaspo6752 While 100 is 80% of 125, 125 is 125% of 100. The difference is 25, which can be expressed as both percentages.
@@rosverlegaspo6752 well assuming they expect to see 100 and instead 125 were revealed, there would be a 25% difference. (125-100)/100 = 25%
Okay, but what if you placed 6 small apples on the table, and then revealed 4 big ones?
There's a whole subset of experiments about just this thing - and the results are pretty interesting (though hard to control for all sorts of potential confounders)
@@MinuteEarth aaaannnddd??
saying there are experiments but not saying anything else is just torturing the curious, at least guide us to the papers, please
(and thank you for the video)
@yyeetmax2849 bro, there are references in the descriptions of the video for you to check out if you like.
@@ianvanancheta9005 thank you
(being curious doesn't mean not being a dumbass sometimes as you an see)
@@yyeetmax2849 I always like to say intelligence extends in both directions. Some people are just average, but some are incredibly smart- and also sometimes the dumbest people you've ever met. I like to think I'm occasionally smart despite being mostly a dumbass lmao
I did a similar experiment with horses, which apparently cannot count at all despite the "hoof counting" trick. If you have an entire Gator full of oats, separated into feed bags or buckets, and the horse KNOWS all those oats are there, merely setting a container on the ground, or bringing it closer to the horse, or just setting it down slightly closer, results in the horse going after the container instead of the jackpot. It's like they have no idea whether amounts are greater or smaller, just whichever food is closer.
Similarly, but with a single notable difference, if you get two horses, the dominant one will always want whatever the other is eating, even if it' a significantly lesser amount. That one "dominant" horse will waste more time chasing off the "rival" and travelling between food supplies than actually eating for about ten minutes. Then they get hungry enough that they just eat whatever is in front of them at the time.
They do this because they are grazing animals, so relative size doesn't normally matter to them. Food is everywhere, and any other animal is a threat. A horse can be terrified by a small child, or a rabbit, because the horse is too flighty to know that those things couldn't possibly hurt them. They have no sense of their own size, except when it comes to other horses, and even then, it's dicey. A small horse can run off a big one if it is aggressive enough.
I didn't continue my experiments much further because I wasn't really conducting a proper experiment and I love horses too much to bother. But I still affectionately call them "stupids". Yes, they are intelligent enough to be trained very well, and they aren't completely clueless. I had a horse that figured out how to open doorknobs. But that same horse couldn't figure out that not EVERY part of the fence was a potential gate. He'd just stand at the fence, waiting for me to open it, when the gate was open twenty feet away. Beautiful creatures, kinda smart, and still dumb as a bag of hammers when compared to a human.
The gate thing reminds me of my chickens. I see so many people online saying that chickens being dumb is just a myth and they're actually very intelligent. Meanwhile I'm just watching mine throw themselves against the fence, desperately trying to get to the food on the other side, when the open gate they just left through 30 seconds ago is 2 feet to the left.
I once watched one get lost on a path I dug through deep snow with no forks or intersections and one turn.
@@ryankunst668 That is interesting but I have different observation with my chickens, although it depends on a chicken. i have a few that are dumb as hell, lets be real, those few are constantly on a 1% of a brainpower. But the rest (majority) of the flock will always run through the gate behind me, in order to get to the food. Couple days ago a hen jumped on me in order to get to the duck feed I was carrying, she is heavy enough that I wasn't able to hold the feeder, and hens were able to eat watered duck feed, that they love for whatever reason. Now I have to be really careful around them, because otherwise they will knock feeder out of my hands or will scratch my back jumping on me.
I also had a chicken that was able to open the gate - before I placed type of the door, they can't physically open without fingers- then she was sitting, allowing other chickens to run out, and finally she was escaping. Another hens forced me to put an extra net on a one part of chicken coop, otherwise they were using stairs and aviary roof as a place allowing them to escape from the coop and into neighbour garden - which has better grass in it, because no chickens. They still try to get through that net. But only those smarter ones, again, dumb members of the flock can barely understand the rooster signalling danger.
Man, horses are fking cool
Horses and cows are scared of red color; it signals blood! I had a red car and drove by, the horses were curious who's coming, their heads over the fence,looking. But when I came close, all horses turned their heads away, they didn't want to see the car. Verv much suppose, it was because of the color!
@@Nika44Just like human society !
“If valve was owned by monkeys, we could get tf3”
Stolen comment
@@somerandomcube hey kiddo, I didn’t steal anyones comment, I just said something that I thought would be funny, stop assuming that I stole someone comment just so you can get some likes by some likeminded, lame people 😂
@@EmperorTetraObsessedPerson doesn't mean that i didn't see the same thing already. Not as creative as you think, pissling.
Instead you get Deadlocked. The league version of Valve hero shooters…
@@somerandomcube pissling, how ironic the person saying that is the piss itself
My question is how do scientists know when spiders are surprised???
1:04 yeah, do they have little surprised eyebrows or something!?
Now If I think about it. Hmm really how? They probably cannot scan their brain activity as we don't have such sensitive machines to pick up small signals.
@@trumpetpunk42 They probably monitor their brain activity and see how the brain reacts
spiders DO have their own body language, its just not something most humans would be familiar with. I used to have a friend with a pet jumping spider, and she would wave her arms a little and tilt her head when she was curious/investigating something new. Someone who researches spiders would definitely be able to pick up on a spider being surprised or confused.
@@oliearts8074 I think jumping spiders are the most expressive species though.
This desperately needs the song "I can only count to four" as background music
That was the soundtrack to much of our production process!
That's so cool 😂
This remind me of Drowning Pool - "Let the bodies hit the floor"
@@alankoh807 There's a parody of that song but it's replaced with "I can only count to four", 'tis the reference!
ruclips.net/video/u8ccGjar4Es/видео.htmlsi=1SMaGWlkFcgvLkIY
I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUR
From my marketing lessons I remember that also the human brain begins to have difficulties when the choice between products gets higher than 4. It also confuses us.
You'd probably not be surprisd to hear the "three things" idea is important in good game design too.
Reminds me of this old YT vid of 5 funny words of wisdom...
"Number 4: Never end a list on number 4"
"Number 5: It's however okay to bid adieu on number 5."
I completely agree. I majored in marketing. When faced with too many choices customers can not or will refuse to make a decision. I ordered a hot ham and cheese once and they gave me four choices of bun or bread and six choices of cheese and I'm like just pick it for me. I just wanted to grab a quick lunch and relax and not overthink my sandwich. I never went back and that place eventually went out of business. Mostly, I think because their menu was too large and too many options per item.
When we designed computer menus, we never had menus with more than seven items.
If counting is the point of the exercise, we can recognize patterns at a glance, but that requires practice and being able to multiply helps. Like a 3x3 square grid is nine, 5x5 is 25, but if they're jumbled, we have to count them or divide into smaller groups we recognize. I know at a glance a 3-wide hex or bundle of circles is seven items, while a pyramid is six. For the most part, 4 to 5 is the cap for humans recognizing an exact number at a glance, without a pattern. That also includes patterns, so most all of us would have to count sides if a grid went beyond 5x5. A standard container will also help, like if you know a full container holds 12x12 of a thing and it's full, you don't have to count anything to know you've got 144.
That's no stuff animal. That's famous news host Tulio Triviño, from the super serious chilean news channel 31minutes, no wonder they were surprised that there weren't three, but in fact, two famous news host Tulio Triviño in the box.
Tulio!
tUlio
-juanin juan harry
Yes! I knew I would not be the only one to know it. Túlio and the 31 minutes news are the best!
OMG 31 Minutos reference
kdjsha
We need to put this up top, for Tulio’s honor!
¡Tuuulio, estamos al aire!
“How many apples do you have”
“uhhhhhhh 4 x 1.25”
The fact that it actually took me 5 whole seconds to calculate it.
I'm terrible at math.
To calculate 4 x 1.25:
1. First, break 1.25 into a fraction: 1.25 = 1 + 0.25.
2. Multiply 4 by 1:
4 x 1 = 4.
3. Then, multiply 4 by 0.25:
4 x 0.25 = 1.
4. Add both results together:
4 + 1 = 5.
So, 4 x 1.25 equals 5!
So the ability to "eyeball" something is pretty universal amongst animals. Hmm
And since we are also animals, we also have the ability.
I wonder if Richard Adams knew this when he wrote Watership Down. It's built into the rabbit language that they can only count to four. There's no explanation given, but the popular theory is that the rabbits were counting on their paws, and they only have four paws.
The mentioning of only having four paws! I forgot that bit, now I want to read it all over again 🩷
Yes! I was thinking about that. "Hrair" means "thousand" or "many" and "Hrair-roo" means little thousand/more than four or "Fiver"
I think it’s a pretty well-known concept in general.
When I was a kid, I remember reading about how, if there are four or less items in a set, humans are able to determine its size just by looking at it. If it’s larger than that, we either have to count or go by its relative size. In other words, as long as we avoid counting, we’re really no better at this than other animals.
@@berlinflight_tv Unless they're in a specific pattern. People can recognise the "cross" shape of five dice dots and anything in that pattern, or the three-and-two pattern, and so on. But 8 scattered things vs 9 scattered things? Compared to a 2x4 grid vs a 2x2 grid _plus one?_ The pattern makes it easy.
Bugs Bunny: I make Elmer count to four before that grenade blows up in his face. He's a MAROON.
I cannot help but think of Blackadder trying to teach Baldrick adding:
Blackadder: If I have two beans, and then I add two more beans, what do I have?
Baldrick: Some beans.
Blackadder: Yes... and no. Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans; then I add two more beans. What does that make?
Baldrick: A very small casserole.
What video game is this?
@@le9038 Blackadder is a television series about Lord Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson (and his descendants, every new season is a new time period).
@@le9038 Google is an information retrieval simulator game. It allows you to look up things up and the game will provide simulated information based on your query. You gotta try it.
I guess I need to watch that. A PBS station in a neighboring city used to broadcast British shows during their fundraising and sometime in the early 90s they introduced "The Black Adder", but then aired a rather dull office sitcom set in a yellowish office with an angry boss with a very 70s-ish mustache. I've been stuck with the wrong impression of the show for 30 years until you corrected it just now. 🤦♂
@@MerennulliI'm not convinced that you're talking about the same show.
This reminds me of *Through the Looking Glass* when the chess queens host a math quiz:
"Can you do Addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?"
"I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count."
"She can't do Addition," the Red Queen interrupted.
Computer Scientist: "It's one"
The answer is "True".
I tried counting these, and then stopped myself when I realized I was just repeating “one and” instead of counting.
@@GregMoress it's true not 1, a comparison operation returns a boolean
well 10 sets of ones equals 10 i'm pretty sure.
In the field of AI science we learned a similar concept: vocabulary vastly improves cognitive ability. To preface the field has a term called generalized intelligence. It is the abilty to connect and apply learning in one area to another unrelated area. Even as AI scientists developed methods to teach AI how to perform any singular task, they failed for the longest time to reach generalized intelligence. That is until they taught AI how to understand linguistics and vocabulary. Then AI took a jump leap towards generalized intelligence.
We learned vocabulary is the key to connecting disparate concepts together and applying prior knowledge between the two. Human level Intelligence seems to be entirely based on linguistics.
This suggests the advent of rudimentary language was what allowed early hominids to memorize their environment better than other animals and interact with it more intelligently. Thus linguistic ability was naturally selected for in hominids.
Very interesting
maybe the inherent abstraction that occurs during the evolution of linguistics influences those who learn it to apply abstraction to other concepts?
@@3u-n3ma_r1-c0 Abstract thought, particularly reasoning, is inherently tied to linguistic communication. As far as we know, complex abstraction can only occur through language. Humans learn in two primary ways: reasoning and subconscious pattern recognition (often referred to as intuition). These two processes work in tandem in modern humans, but the earliest hominids likely relied solely on the latter. Language plays a crucial role in transforming intuition into structured reasoning within the mind, enabling individuals to rationalize their thoughts. Furthermore, without language, knowledge cannot be effectively shared or passed on to others. The inability to communicate abstract ideas makes it exceedingly difficult to accumulate the necessary knowledge to connect and understand complex concepts within a human lifetime. Thus, language is not only fundamental to abstract thinking but also essential for the transmission and expansion of knowledge.
How much do you actually know about that? ChatGPT is definitely not “generalized intelligence”. It just happens to be AI applied to linguistics which a lot of human knowledge is stored as. It’s not more intelligent than the AI that makes pictures or videos etc except for the fact that it might have more training data
@@facebren Allow me to apologize for the confusion. I did not mean to imply we have yet reached generalized intelligence. Rather we have made large steps that are getting us closer to it. That is to say, language models showed us a way to get over a few of the hurdles in the journey towards generalized artificial intelligence.
More specifically, artificial neural networks learn inductively and infer intuitively. Human intuition is quite similar in that specific way. Additionally, humans are able to through language rationalize intuition into reasoning and reasoning into intuition. Since reasoning is vital to generalized intelligence, teaching linguistics to AI is vital to coming closer to generalized artificial intelligence in the future.
This explains the detail about rabbit society in _Watership Down_ having the same limits to their counting. Anything five or more, the characters called "hrair", usually translated to "thousand". It's one of my favorite books, but I'd wondered about that seemingly arbitrary restriction.
Is this similar to Be Smart's recent video about why all numbering systems created by humans usually use tick marks until 4 or 5?
I had thought about that as well lol
Not that I mind it, because usually it's slightly to quite different matter, but MinuteEarth usually makes videos on similar topics as those on recent other science channels. I have noticed it at least twice in the last few weeks.
Tbh a few science channels have discussed similar topics before, like vsauce, but its still interesting with the added info the channels before didnt mention
Exactly this!
@@prvashisht Is minute earth stealing content?
So it's like aliens presenting a heap of sand, and revealing a heap of sand. And the aliens wonder why we couldn't notice 67 sand particles missing.
THE ALIENS PULLED A PRANK AND INSTANTLY MOVED EVERY GRAIN OF SAND FROM EACH BEACH TO DIFFEENT BEACH ALL IN 1 SECOND OF TIME. THE SILLY MONKEY HUMANS DIDNT EVEN NOTICE THE PRANK SO WE NEVER CAME BACK.
well cause we probably wont see them
I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOUUR!
1, 2, 5, 4 (5, 4)...
Mee count so poor....
Young siblings when we give them a perfect half of the m&ms and they still cant trust us and neither count:
1!
I CAN COUNT TO ONE!
2!
I CAN COUNT TO TWO!
3!
I CAN COUNT TO THREE!
4!
I CAN'T COUNT NO MOREEE!
THE ARE FOUR LIGHTS
One what comes after one
Two what comes after two
Three what comes after three
FOOOOUUUUUURRRRR!
That "island in the Caribbean" that he mentions is a small tiny island off the coast of south-eastern Puerto Rico called Cayo Santiago where a very studied group of Rhesus monkeys, around 1800 of them, have been under research since *1938* !! Researchers brought around 400 originally, so all their descendants have been tracked in detail to do all sorts of genetic and behavior research on them. It's amazing how they have also survived lots of really heavy hurricanes.
“I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4, I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4, I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOUUUURRRR”🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
How much were the adults prepared to count? Because if they went into the experiment unprimed, I can imagine lots of them not bothering to count and just eyeballing it just like the other animals.
I think we can eyeball better then animals
@@trla6505 well we eye Ball diferently than said animals
We or at least i throw a random number when eyeballing and then Maybe try counting from there
Rather than Just pile vs bigger pile
The thing is, adult humans will subconsciously count the apples, keeping an exact tally of them. When they see all the apples at once, their first thought will be to compare how many apples they see now to how many they counted.
Animals and small children do not "count" the apples, as they do not have a number system to count with.
@@bywonlinei guess brains are way better at multiplication and division than addition and subtractkkn
@@spindash64I think it is more about visual recognition. I would guess that a set of 4 and set of 5 would not be easily recognisable in a culture that does not use such pattern.
So what does that make of Gabe Newell?? He can only count to 2.
scientists have been debating this question for centuries
Well, if a whole-lifeform can count to 4, a half-lifeform......
@@pplesandoranges that's crazy
@@pplesandoranges GENIUS
He can count to 4.
He goes straight from 2 to 4, and has no idea what 3 is.
I saw some similar experiments with small children and coins. It was something like they valued physically bigger coins more than smaller ones regardless of their actual value. But the more interesting part was how when coins were lined up, they would think 4 coins spaced away were worth more than 4 identical coins lined up one touching the other. Or even how 4 coins were worth more than 5 identical coins, because the were spaced out in such a way that the length of the four-coin line was longer than the five-coin one.
Makes you think about how our brains perceive and estimate numbers, sizes, values and such.
I've seen a video of that experiment with the spaced-out coins, but I'm not totally convinced the kids aren't just trying to guess what answer the experimenter is looking for and give them that. They show the kid one arrangement of coins, ask a question about it, change the arrangement, repeat the question, and then "obviously" the answer must be different, or they wouldn't have asked again, right? Even adults will sometimes give plainly incorrect answers to questions when they think they're being prompted to give those answers.
@@iang0thas someone who is autistic and has spent my entire life trying to figure out what is really being asked when I’m posed a question in school, THIS. THIS is absolutely what happened. The researches gives you two set ups. Four coins pushed together, and four spread apart. They then ask you which is worth more, suggesting they’re looking for two different answers. We shall now reason that the more spread apart ones are worth more because they have something more looking.
@@sociallyineptsnapper sometimes it frustrates me alot with scenarios like those, why people can't just say what their intentions are 😁the reason for not doing it is probably that it 'would affect the result', but anything that is done affects the result regardless!
@@genesises yah 😅
@@sociallyineptsnapperSame! Before I understood that sometimes people ask trick questions, I just picked the answer that I saw the teachers derive "joy" from when they tested it on the students arouns me. That "joy" was then giggling at how "cute" and "dumb" kids are, but I didn't know that.
I remember watching a documentary about an australian tribe whose language didn't have words for numbers a long time ago. They could enumerate things by citing their names, had words for "many", "few" and "none", but they didn't have numbers by themselves. Very interesting to see how counting is directly related to language.
And at the same time, some of these native tribes have dozens of words for natural phenomena that we can describe by only one word - such as types of snow, sand, wind, bushes, leaves, smells, animal features etc. It is all a matter of efficiency. Do you need algebra or calculus to survive in the Australian desert? No, but you surely have to know how to read footprints, predict weather, recognize poisonous food, create tools, build a shed or spot dangerous animals. You become smart in a way that is efficient for your needs.
There also was an experiment, in which anthropologists asked members of a native tribe to "sort items logically", expecting them to sort the items according to size. The natives sorted them according to their purpose - putting bow next to meat etc. As this was a pioneering era of anthropology, the researchers considered the test as a lack of intelligence on part of the natives. Many years later, the same group of natives was visited by another team of researchers, who asked them "how would a crazy person sort these items". The natives sorted them by size.
Something similar happens in cultures that write numbers with a tally system (think like Roman or Mayan numerals), after either 3 or 4 the symbol changes because it gets harder to differentiate the amounts.
I wasn't expecting to see a Tulio Triviño on MinuteEarth... What a nice surprise!
Yeah I was like wtf
Creo que en Estados Unidos es kind of a meme
31 minutos mentioned 🔥🔥🔥
3:23 love that 31 minutos reference!
I screamed IS THAT TULIO out loud
Came here just to say this! ♥️
I'm happy i'm not alone here
Vengo a lo mismo. Estoy en shock!
Isn't it just a sock monkey? Tulio is literally one. I did have the same reaction tho, he looks like him but it might just be a coincidence
3:25 Is that Tulio??? 🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱
Pensé lo mismo
El mismisimo Tulio Triviño
@@martinsilva2190 Túlio Trivinho in the Brazilian dub🇧🇷
Es el
Wow, this is crazy. I had a theory in my brain a LONG time ago about how we can really only count groups of 3. While my logic is different than this video's, it does align in the practicality.
My reasoning was; obviously we can see if there are groups of 1 or 2, and we can extend that to 3 (it would be 1 more than 2). But once we get past that, say 4 or 5, we are now counting the items either by 1's, 2's, or 3's. Basically, if we see a group of 4+, we're not actually able to know the count without doing some basic calculation in our head, vs. a group of 1, 2, or 3, we can instantly know the size without calculation.
I'm not sure that's true. You can train yourself to recognize the number of objects instantly. At least it works for numbers less than ten. The problem is that if the objects don't fit into the effective part of your visual field, you have to move your gaze and instinctively divide the objects into groups.
However, it is possible that the process is always the same, but for smaller groups it happens so quickly that we are not aware of it.
Oh, I see. If we're talking about objects arranged in a line, like letters, we need one object in the center and one object to the left and one to the right of it, so we have a group of three; the same with groups - one in the center, one to the left, one to the right. If there are more groups, we have to remember their number from the central group, choose a new central group, and continue counting from it. So it's easy to get confused if there are too many letters - we lose the center of reference. If the objects are of the same type and we see them all at once, then, as I said, we can immediately recognize more than three. (Or we train ourselves to count them quickly)
So... it's all about language, and we're just like monkeys?
@@chto3ugodno ye, we're all monkeys basically ahahha
The stuffed animals bit made me smile lol
Similar thing happens in some human tribes that have been known for this phenomenon too, it's super interesting how nature forms our perception. They are simply unable to count beyond a certain threshold, referring to simply "a lot". Same with colours, a subset of humanity struggles to differentiate shades of blue from green but are perfectly capable to differentiate shades of blue that others can't.
I mean numerically speaking the difference between 3 and 4 is as big as the difference between 99 and 100. However the difference between 3 and 4 feels a LOT bigger.
Thinking in proportions is often more useful than thinking in numbers.
As an example if you look at diagrams in politics, they never start at 0, but at some arbitrary point in order to exagerate the point they're trying to make.
@@etuannoThose graphs are only exaggerating if 0 itself is not arbitrary. For example in temperature, 0 is arbitrary in Celsius and Fahrenheit. But a lot of people stubbornly tell me that climate change graphs are exaggerated if they don't start at 0.
@@demo2823 If you plot the graph by temperature change, then you can easily start at 0 (meaning no change).
You could plot the graph starting at 0 Kelvin, then the difference won't be noticable, but its effects are.
Well educated humans also work like that, they just have better precision and higher scale. Maybe after tens we're using dozens and then boxes for scale. Having 2 or 3 apples fewer in a 4 dozens of apple is the same effect for them 4 to 5 apples.
"Imagine whats going on inside their head"
Monke: I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOUR! I CAN ONLY COUNT TO FOOOOOOOUUUURRRR!!!
Not a biologist here, but I belive it is rather generally accepted fact that human senses (and I would reasonably expect that also animals) work on logarithmic scale instead of linear. For example touch: if I put a 100g and 110g weights into either of your hands, you would be able to tell them apart, but if it were 200 and 210 grams, you would be much less likely to suceed. Or hearing: when you take 3 tones you would percieve as having same interval 1->2 as 2->3, say an octave, you would find that their physical property frequency is actually in ration 1:2:4 (twice as much as before). It likely boils down to the fact that we do comparisons (this is twice as much as before so I will consider it a next step). Again, I do not do research in biology so feel free to tell me if I am wrong on anything.
Our sense of pitch would then be more like a parabola, because they suddenly fall off our hearing ability on either end. Same with colour, which is probably why we can distinguish green so well.
The fact that this videos is four minutes makes the video even better and also I'm daytime four months after it got upload
In terms of neurology, counting works in two different ways.
1) Intuitive counting. Most humans can intuitively count as high as four, but certain savants (autism) can intuitively count numbers into the hundreds. Intuitive counting is when you look at a pile of things and immediately know how many there are without having to resort to list counting.
2) List counting. We have a series of words in a list, and then work our way through the list whilst simultaneously eliminating objects. When we run out of objects, the list entry we ended on is the number of objects. This is a language-centric method.
Interestingly, intuitive counting appears to be linked to dimensions. It is theorised that animals subconsciously superimpose lines between each of the objects in a group, and the number of dimensions that the resulting shape has, determines the number of objects. For example:
A single object creates a point in three dimensional space. A point is a zero-dimensional object.
Two objects create a line between their two points in three dimensional space. A line is a one-dimensional object.
Three objects creates a triangle between their three points in three dimensional space. A triangle is a two-dimensional object.
Four objects creates a tetrahedron between their four points in three dimensional space. A tetrahedron is a three-dimensional object.
It appears that intuitive counting has a hard cutoff at four because mathematically, there are no dimensions left which animals can intuitively count through dimension-superimposition. There is a hard barrier after four which requires the animal to switch to list counting in order to count any higher, and this requires language.
Some humans can train themselves to intuitively count even higher, by mentally separating objects into multiple groups of four or less, and then adding together the results. However, this is an exception and not the norm.
For anyone wondering and wanting to do more research on the topics: The abilities in question are called "Subitizing" for instinctively knowing (not counting) the exact amount of things ≤ 4 and "Approximate Number Sense" (ANS) for being able to differentiate large amount of grouped things, if the difference is big enough. :)
This is what I was thinking when I saw this title. I was thinking they can’t count past 4 for the same reason we can’t instantly count past like 5 or something. We have to manually do it at some point which they probably can’t do
Isn't it true that humans can immediately see if there are 5 things, but when there are more they have to actually count them. Seems pretty relevant to this video?
Probably. Magicians use these principles too.
That was definitely true for me when i worked as a cashier. Had to count really fast sometimes, 5 or less was just instinctive and with more i had to group them into 5s and math out the groups
Yeah, five and six are about the highest numbers that you can do that with, in my experience
In my experience it’s 4 not 5.
@@Niko-zf5ml perhaps you are a monkey
Ok as a book nerd I love this because Watership Down was published in 1972 and one of the characters is literally named after the rabbit word for being the runt of too large a litter, Fiver. Richard Adams consulted a naturalist when he was writing his rabbit story and in the text he specifically mentions that rabbits can only count to four, with anything over five being considered hrair meaning "many/a thousand”. Xenofiction is made richer by understanding an animal’s subjective experience and understanding of its world!
This was my first thought as well! There must have been some inkling then, in research or anecdotally that 4 is the “magic” number
Thanks! Should have scrolled down a bit before I posted my comment. I was just wondering whether he researched or just happened to put a correct detail in his book. When I read it in middle school, I just considered it a fun bit of world-building, demonstrating that the rabbits still aren't as smart as humans even though they're talking to each other. It didn't occur to me that it might have basis in fact.
@@seatbelttruck it’s one of my all time favorite books, not only was Richard Adams a lover of nature himself but he took his first book very seriously and wanted it to be as true to reality as he could make it. He struggled to get it published because of its subject matter and maturity, they wanted him to tone it down to better appeal to children and he insisted that he wasn’t making a story targeted towards maintaining innocence but rather to show the harsh realities of wild animals’ lives. He makes it clear that his rabbits know their place in the world as prey animals and gave them an entire culture and mythology to explain their existence and rationalize the horrors they endure. Naming and characterizing the rabbits after human comrades in arms that he knew while serving in the military really brings it home that they’re not gentle little sweet bunnies, but rather just like any wild animal they’re capable of being vicious and cruel to defend themselves and their own. They survive so much in the story that a human wouldn’t think a rabbit could be capable of achieving but Richard makes it clear that in the wild rabbits can swim, they’re clever enough to trick and evade predators, and they’re smart enough to do whatever they need to do to survive. It’s not a fantasy story, it’s as real as he could possibly make it!
There's a few things which are included in Watership Down which are based on the real behaviour of rabbits, but which are surprisingly difficult to find documentation about anywhere online.
For example, the behaviour of rabbits leaving their warren if they're dying, in order to distract predators and prevent diseases spreading to other rabbits, is real. It's described in Watership Down, but I tried looking it up and couldn't find any academic sources describing it. I've seen it directly in nature though - a few years ago, late at night, I was walking with a friend past a grassy area where a lot of wild rabbits lived, and a rabbit with myxomatosis crawled up to us (I was able to diagnose it, also based on description from Watership Down). The rabbit wasn't just fearless or ignorant of us, it actually approached us when it heard us walking past, apparently intentionally. We took it to a vet to have it put down.
@@nathangamble125that’s fascinating, thank you for sharing and for your compassion to end the suffering for the poor rabbit.
to be fair a human probably wouldn't see the difference between 11 and 12 either.
Actually, that's also what happens with humans, we don't have a true notion of size sample, but we can abstract them quite well due to language.
I remember studying this in a psychology class. Humans also have this size comparison thing, and it's been tested for a lot of things in a lot of ways. They call it a 'just noticeable difference'. Our just noticeable difference happens to be way more precise than a monkey's lol, probably because along our evolution we care a lot more about details like sizes of things.
Things are sold by the dozen so much, like a dozen eggs or a dozen donuts that I don’t think that’s true.
@@dinnerboons1504 with those examples you'd notice because they are neatly arranged, so you'd notice the pattern breaking. you would be able to tell when a carton of eggs is missing one but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a basket with 11 and 12 eggs.
*Laughs in Bakers dozen*
1:55 which in of itself is amazing as it shows object permanence
Funnily enough, there are even human languages (such as Aka-Jeru (Andaman Islands) and Munduruku (Amazon)) that have no words for numbers above 3 (or sometimes even 2). The people who spoke them had no real need for number words, so all they had words for were "one," "two," "three" "a little" and "a lot."
On a similar note I've heard of how some older cultures used the number 8 for "a lot" or "all" because it's two fours
@@edgargaebolg9307 Awesome - tell me more!
In what sense? As in, the biggest number they have in the lang is just used to mean "a lot" (like the number 20 in Ainu), which is sort of a chicken-or-the-egg situation (did 20 come to mean a lot, or a lot come to mean 20)?
Or just that eight is special?
@@penand_paper6661 In ancient Japan the number 8 was used that way but apparently there's not an official reason to why. Some theories I've found are:
- 3 and 5 are the male and female numbers, so their sum 8 encompasses all.
- The kanji 八 suggests infinite expansion.
- It's homophonic with 弥 (ya), which means "more and more"
- 4 is a holy number, so 8 is "double holy" and perfect
I wonder what not counting above a certain number does to birth rates. Once you pass the "many" point for children, do you keep having them until you are struggling to care for them all? Since there is no number that the society can decide is too many children to be reasonably looked after, so your only indicator is when you have gone too far for your personal circumstances. Or do they stop while they can still count them.
@@demo2823 They count them the same way they count coconuts or something.
I really don't see why in the world this would stop them from having children, considering Amazon tribes try pretty hard to have kids, and even if they have six, they can recognize and name them like we can.
Arguably, since a very active lifestyle can prevent ovulation, I'd say it's quite the opposite - when you have more what to count, then you invent numbers. When numbers are irrelevant, there's no need to invent them.
Same reason why Ainu and Inuktitut (also spoken by hunter-gatherers) had no word for anything higher than 20 - at that point, who cares? It's a lot.
"I can only count to four. I can only count to four. I can only count to FOOOOOUUURRRRRRR."
- Psychostick
ONE!
what comes after one?
TWO!
what comes after two?
THREE!
what comes after three?
FFFOUUUURRRR!!!!!👹😈
0:13 neurones activated
I'm just happy I wasn't the only one that seen that
Monkey sees action
Sees belly: neuronal activation
Sees woman's navel
So good! The artwork is so cute! Those little animal facial expressions get me every time.
There’s actually a human language that doesn’t have numbers, spoken by the Piraha Tribe. I wonder how they would react to this trick.
1
WHAT COMES AFTER 1
2
WHAT COMES AFTER 2
3
WHAT COMES AFTER 3
FOOUUUURRR
I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4!
YAA
2nd hand story, my friend used to do something similar with his dog. He’d put 1 treat, 2 treats, 3 treats… behind a screen and after give them 1 by 1 to her. At first she could only count to 3, after giving her 3, if there was a 4th, she’d stand up and not be sitting eagerly waiting for the next. With practice though, she learned to count to 6. Dunno if he was giving her verbal cues though, counting as he placed them, or not.
0:53 - Instead of saying the monkey can count, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that they have some concept of object permanence?
Scientists call it an "object tracking system" and it's definitely needed - along with the so-called "approximate number system" that they use
If they lacked object permanence the number of apples wouldn't affect whether or not they're surprised.
They are not counting anything. Their brain just thinks ‘oh there’s a thing, and another thing, and another thing’. On the reveal his memory will expect to be able to say the same thing. But after too many things, the short term memory can’t retrace it all exactly, because it’s a string of things they can’t remember exactly… (because they didn’t count it). It’s a memory limit- not a counting limit as such
You are right. We use language and numbers to count. It is difficult to imagine large numbers in our heads. Animals and children hardly have enough memory or concentration for this.
The more important question is how do you tell when a spider is surprised?
3:29 hey, thoose toys look alike Tulio Triviño (from 31 minutos a chilean puppet cartoon)
THEY ARE!!!
@@RomanFalcon13 i know, i watch that cartoon, i speak native Uruguayan spanish
Tulio Triviño mentioned, Latinamericans summoned
@@martinparababire-mrrx-3448 jajajaaj, i am latinamerican
Jajaja, tambien me sorprendi cuando lo vi, quiza le hayan encargado la animación a algún latino?
Birds seem to be able to determine either smaller or greater numbers above 4. But not the actual numbers.
And they also understand death. I have watched a Magpie funeral, where several birds repeatedly brought individual pieces of straw, and placed them on the body, and walked around the body making sad sounds. It moved me greatly.
I always thought humans were a mix of all animals and their knowledge.
@@gneu1527Theyre not
I don't think being sad or even having a ritual means you understand death. Understanding death is realizing you'll die yourself, which no animal showed awareness of afaik.
@@xenotypos It’s debatable.
I would say they do, they’re more likely to see it happening to animals in their same species. They try to escape it when they’re preyed upon.
Some have funerals. Some of them take care of their dying.
The only thing setting humans apart is more intricate linguistics.
I don’t really buy that they cannot know simply because they cannot be told. Some things such as death can become self evident.
It’s better to say we aren’t sure about that answer and havent proven yes or otherwise, imo.
@@HomeByTheSeas "They try to escape it when they’re preyed upon."
Dude are you serious ? Survival instinct has nothing to do with it, what you're suggesting is that a fly or an ant is aware of death, since they try to escape it. Even you must realize how ridiculous that thought is.
Being aware of death means being self-aware of your own existence as an individual, and comparing yourself to others. Most animals don't even pass the self-awareness tests that exist, so understanding they'll die too is out of question for them. That only leaves a few of them (elephants, dolphins/orcas/whales, monkeys, some birds...) for which it could be "debatable".
TULIO TREVIÑO SALE AL FINAL 3:22
A fun similar connection is colour differentiation and having a name for colours. For example, having a word for lavender and a word for purple make it easier for you to tell those two colors apart, even when you can't directly reference them than if you don't have that word. This puts English speakers in weird spot when it comes to colour. We have an absurd number of loan words that we assign to various tones and hues that many other languages won't have a word for on their own and where they take less loan words. This makes us more capable of seeing these colours passively If your colour vocabulary expands into that space. Many other languages simply don't have as many loan words and therefore haven't named as many colors. It's also worth noting that when we don't have a specific word for something but rather a relative term for a colour (light blue as an example) we will find it harder to see the difference between the colors that are being grouped together due to how they relate to a named colour. A really fascinating example of this is the color orange when compared to brown. Very few languages have named Brown. A lot of languages have named Orange. Brown is either referenced as being the colour of something else (coffee colour) or perceived distinctly as dark orange by languages that lack a name for it. Having a name for something seems to allow perception of it more distinctly than not.
its interesting how an animal "counts". I think a lot of this has to do with how we keep a beat in music. There are also human languages/cultures that didnt have numbers. its amazing on a small level like when your cat looks for another treat after only giving 2, while usually giving 3.
3:25 Tulio!
siiiiiiiiiiiiii
Estamos al aire!
If counting is just "naming quantities", it seems to explain some mental biases. Like how 1 and 1000 seems more different than 1 million and 2 millions. Above some number we loss intuition of the underlying quantity and the number become nothing more than a stranger's name
I can’t imagine how a surprised spider or rabbit looks like. How can we tell, that the animal was surprised in this experiment?
They'll dissect their brains and test for the surprise hormone
I don't know about spiders, but rabbits have eye dilation/restriction and verbalized responses to cue when they're surprised (and no I don't mean talking specifically when I say verbalize haha).
As a pet rabbit owner, I have learned to read rabbit body language. Its fairly subtle but they have a reaction when they are surprised (or in the case of mine begging for food)
@@thatrandomguy8124Mine know how to look angry at the weather while sitting in the rain, just outside their perfectly good shelter. Stupid human, leaving the stupid weather on, when I wanted to get a stupid tan in some stupid sunshine...
spiders DO have their own body language, its just not something most humans would be familiar with. I used to have a friend with a pet jumping spider, and she would wave her arms a little and tilt her head when she was curious/investigating something new. Someone who researches spiders would definitely be able to pick up on a spider being surprised or confused.
This is probably why it's easy to memorize numbers in sets of 3 or 4 (e.g. passwords, phone numbers), but we don't/can't memorize numbers in sets of 5+.
How do spiders react?
Performing magic tricks for spiders?? Hehehehe!
Now I'm imagining the spider version of Statler and Waldorf.
"Boo! It's up his sleeve!"
now I feel an overwhelming urge to sketch what that might look like :)
@@MinuteEarthYes please!
Be smart has a video on a very similar topic! Definitely check that one out it was really good
3:24 Missed opportunity for a "Two-lio" joke
2:47 Couldnt have added just one more apple eh? :P
Me, a human, when there are 757473 grains of rice in the bag instead of the advertised 757472:
:O
3:05
Toddlers are monkeys CONFIRMED!!
“I can only count to 4!”
“I can only count to 4!”
“I can only count to fouuuuuuurrrrrr!!!”
You can count to 24? Not bad.
I kept thinking of the metal song "I can only count to four!" which is a parody of "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor"
I'm curious what would happen if you performed the trick for Piraha speakers (their language doesn't have numbers).
0:12 hechin legs!
i saw a video where the test for dogs was the person would throw balls into tall grass where one can't see them. then after a small number was thrown they would tell the dog to "fetch" and the dog would go looking for a ball. they'd repeat the fetch command but when they said to fetch a 4th time and only 3 were thrown the dog would just look at them and not get it because it knew there weren't any more left in the grass. but it didn't work for larger numbers
I tought so. I just tought of that experiment. Because I know humans can also instintivly count 4 objects, without actually counting.
@@lompeluitenI always thought we could count to 5 instinctively. Middle, left end, right end, one off from left end, and one off from right end. You could point to any object in a row of 5 and I would instantly tell you its number. But on 6 or 7 I would get stuck for a split second.
Is it that they don’t notice or don’t care? Very different things.
Seems insignificant so they don’t pay attention or think about it.
is it? for a wild animal, it makes sense that "dont know" and "dont care" would be pretty close to synonymous. Something that an animal doesn't need to care about for survival, they wont evolve to take note of.
@ In higher intelligence animals like primates, many things are learned. They aren’t born knowing everything they need like insects.
What one monkey knows another might not. It’s certainly possible they have the capacity to count beyond 4 but need to learn it, the way humans need to learn about large numbers and concepts like infinity.
But I wouldn’t say not knowing and not caring are the same thing because what an animal cares about depends on various factors like mood, physical condition, environmental conditions, etc. Their priorities change and some are only coaxed out under the correct conditions.
Like most cars will avoid going into water but toss one in and it’ll swim.
🎵I can only count to four. One, two, five four. I can't count no more.🎵
as a therian i don't like counting to big numbers
Such an amazing video! Very interesting and no unnecessary information
3:22 is that tulio triviño? main face of the famous show 31 minutos?
maybe also VIVA CHILE
2:38 Add one more apple, please.
Nice
2:39 The men got nerd☝️🤓
NO
3:22 Is that... is that Tulio Treviño? Boy, even I was surprised.
3:21
¡Tutio! ¡Tulio!
¿Qué pasa, Juanín?
¡Estás al aire! ¡Y no al aire, al mismo tiempo!... #31Minutos...
You are awesome, guys... That little "trick" at the end made my night...
They just didn't upgrade their ram, they got Brain mk0.5 with DDR 1 0,015625 kb ram. (0,015625 kb can only store 4 numbers / values)
3:24 Want to count past four? You’re going to need today’s sponsor, Brilliant.
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
3:23 Tulio Triviño?
hell yeah
3:37 LITTLE TULIO, 31 MINUTOS MENTIONED RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAA
3:05 i can understand why the black one didnt know💀
one of the first lines in watership down (the book) is "rabbits can only count to four"
I should read the book
There is (was?) a tribe in the Amazonia that had a similar situation. They would count until 4-5, but after that it was more like "many" or "a lot". There are some papers about them, quite interesting.
“I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4 I CAN ONLY COUNT TO 4”
I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS COMMENT LOLOL 😂 I LOVE PSYCHOSTICK
TULIO REFERENCE
This is interesting. It reminds me of that research done with remote civilisations in the Amazon that didn't have a counting system like our declarative counting. Pulling it from memory, they tended to estimate the centrepoint between 1-10 to be around 3 because of the brains innate tendency to make logarithmic scale estimates.
A bit like the natural experience of the increments between 10m and 100m being similar to 100 light years vs 1000 light years.
That Tulio Triviño was unspected.Well played.
Still better than valve
“There are four lights!”
I mean, even though we can count to like seventy-three and know that's objectively more than seventy-two, in daily life we don't really care to count that much. Like if you gave me a pile of 73 jelly beans and 72 jelly beans, I won't be able to differentiate them, to me it's just "oh here's two big piles of jelly beans" unless you laid them out in a rectangle or some other regular pattern that made it clear there's an extra. If you told me there's 15 jelly beans I picture 3 groups of 5 jelly beans because I just sort of intuitively get 5 of something, but above 6 or 7? then it's in terms of smaller numbers
Here's why humans would count the difference between those jellybean piles:
Siblings.
The language connection is quite interesting, because there are some human languages that don't distinguish specific names for individual large numbers. I wonder how the experiment would go with a monolingual speaker of one of those languages
What if you show the monkeys 3 apples and then show them five?