2026-07-02 12:00:37
Ready to feel particularly unintelligent? A new study has found that GIRAFFES are capable of doing basic maths.
Researchers from The University of Barcelona, University of Leipzig and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology studied four giraffes from Barcelona Zoo, giving them two containers which each contained different amounts of carrot pieces.
They then covered the containers, and added or took away carrot pieces from them – with the giraffes watching the whole time.
Researcher Iker Loidi from the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology at the Faculty of Psychology at the university explained: “The change could involve adding food, as in addition; removing food, as in subtraction; or carrying out sequential operations, such as removing food from one option and adding it to the other.”
Astonishingly, 68% of the time the giraffes selected the containers that more carrot pieces had been added to – a number which exceeds the amount that could be attributed to chance, the scientists said.
Further controlled experiments tested the giraffes to see if they were using different ways of making decisions.
They watched to see whether the animals were choosing the containers based on which had been touched by the researchers.
The results showed that two of the giraffes may have been using that method, while the other two chose the containers with more carrots within the same time period.
In their findings, published in the Scientific Reports journal, the researchers wrote that the results suggest that two of the giraffes were capable of “more complex mental computations”.
In the tests where carrot pieces were removed from the containers, the giraffes were less successful – choosing them at a rate consistent with random chance.
The researchers concluded that the giraffes have a basic understanding of numbers that affect their decision making, although noted that they aren’t performing maths in the same way humans do.
Loidi added: “These results are consistent with what we observe in humans: there are individual differences in numerical problem-solving and, in general, subtraction is more difficult than addition,” Loidi added.
“Furthermore, subtraction activates areas of the brain specialising in complex, controlled processing that addition does not stimulate.
He concluded: “These findings help challenge an overly anthropocentric view of cognition and highlight the importance of studying a wider diversity of groups and species in order to better understand the evolution of the animal mind.”
Visit Bang Bizarre (main website)
