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Author  |
Agrillo, C.; Dadda, M.; Bisazza, A. |
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Title |
Quantity discrimination in female mosquitofish |
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Journal Article |
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Year |
2007 |
Publication |
Animal cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
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Volume |
10 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
63-70 |
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Keywords |
Animals; Cognition; *Cyprinodontiformes; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Male; Mathematics; *Pattern Recognition, Visual |
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Abstract |
The ability in animals to count and represent different numbers of objects has received a great deal of attention in the past few decades. Cumulative evidence from comparative studies on number discriminations report obvious analogies among human babies, non-human primates and birds and are consistent with the hypothesis of two distinct and widespread mechanisms, one for counting small numbers (<4) precisely, and one for quantifying large numbers approximately. We investigated the ability to discriminate among different numerosities, in a distantly related species, the mosquitofish, by using the spontaneous choice of a gravid female to join large groups of females as protection from a sexually harassing male. In one experiment, we found that females were able to discriminate between two shoals with a 1:2 numerosity ratio (2 vs. 4, 4 vs. 8 and 8 vs. 16 fish) but failed to discriminate a 2:3 ratio (8 vs. 12 fish). In the second experiment, we studied the ability to discriminate between shoals that differed by one element; females were able to select the larger shoal when the paired numbers were 2 vs. 3 or 3 vs. 4 but not 4 vs. 5 or 5 vs. 6. Our study indicates that numerical abilities in fish are comparable with those of other non-verbal creatures studied; results are in agreement with the hypothesis of the existence of two distinct systems for quantity discrimination in vertebrates. |
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Address |
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, via Venezia 8, 35131, Padova, Italy. christian.agrillo@unipd.it |
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English |
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ISSN |
1435-9448 |
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Notes |
PMID:16868736 |
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no |
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Call Number |
refbase @ user @ |
Serial |
339 |
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