Researchers from the University of Trento, Italy, have made an amazing discovery – there are countable fish among the fish. The sprinklers turned out to be intellectually gifted – a genus from the Perch-like order and the ray-finned class.
Scientists decided to test the ability of archers to count by following how this fish gets its food. Spitters do this with the help of “spitting”: finding a tasty insect on the leaves near the shore, they spray a stream of water on their victim, knock them down and then devour, writes bioRxiv.
In the course of the experiment, the fish swam in a tank, at the side of which there were disks with the image of dots. At first, biologists taught the spitters to spit only on discs with a certain number of dots, and then they began to decrease / increase the number of dots, as well as vary their sizes. So it turned out that the fish sprinkles water into the discs not randomly, but only into those that have taught it to recognize.
As a result, “on the exam” the fish spat into discs with fewer points, as if counting them and comparing them with those on which they were trained.
Earlier, thanks to British scientists, it became known that sprayers are able to recognize faces. In general, individuals of this genus are able to distinguish fine details and apply the same skill to work with unfamiliar objects, the study said.
Source: Rosbalt
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