"An understanding of numbers is often viewed as a distinctly human faculty ... sets us apart from all other animals." Then it goes into animals that count. My, oh my.
Mom hen knows if a chick is missing. Can she count? Of course she can, how else would she know it. But show me a chicken that will abstract number 5. As 5 chicks, 5 pieces of grain, 5 drops of rain or 5 whatever, so that five becomes an object by itself. I thought it is common knowledge that our ability to abstract is what separates us from animals, but seeing people interested in horses and crows able to count I am starting to doubt it really is so. Animals (mammals at least) feel like us...love, anger, pleasure...they might not hate as us though. Animals can build...spiders, beavers and so on. They can think, communicate, count, have social structures, dream... It is ability of our intellects for abstraction that differs us from them.
Animals can not abstract numbers, they miss faculty for it, whatever that faculty is.
Mom hen knows if a chick is missing. Can she count? Of course she can, how else would she know it. But show me a chicken that will abstract number 5. As 5 chicks, 5 pieces of grain, 5 drops of rain or 5 whatever, so that five becomes an object by itself. I thought it is common knowledge that our ability to abstract is what separates us from animals, but seeing people interested in horses and crows able to count I am starting to doubt it really is so. Animals (mammals at least) feel like us...love, anger, pleasure...they might not hate as us though. Animals can build...spiders, beavers and so on. They can think, communicate, count, have social structures, dream... It is ability of our intellects for abstraction that differs us from them.
Animals can not abstract numbers, they miss faculty for it, whatever that faculty is.