Elephants have a head for figures

An Asian elephant bests a science reporter at a simple counting game. Video courtesy of Naoko Irie/University of Tokyo

Elephants are famous for their supposedly superb memory. Now it seems that they are good at simple maths too.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have found an Asian elephant named Ashya can add small quantities together and correctly identify which is larger.

For example, when researcher Naoko Irie-Sugimoto dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples into the first and five into the second, Ashya correctly identified that the first bucket contained more apples and began munching on her tasty prize.

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