can your hamster count?

herbi7 · 06-09-2018, 06:21 AM

I have wondered recently whether my hams can count. I have been giving Bailey eye drops and discovered if i count him down from three each time, using the same tone of voice and then put him back in his cage straight after, he is prepared to wait patiently till it's done and knows what to expect. I dont know if he goes by my tone of voice as I make it all predictable and the same each time but he really does seem to understand what's happening and how long it will take. I know hamsters can't understand our human words but I do think they have a sense of time and how many of things. Billy, the Syrian hamster I'm fostering who hasn't appeared on here yet, will also wait for his three sunflower hearts before coming out in the evenings. I would try him with higher numbers if i thought he was patient enough to wait but as we do it before he comes out he is usually raring to go so I think that would destroy the experiment!

cypher · 06-09-2018, 07:21 AM

That's an interesting thought herbi! I think I'll have to try some experiments of my own & see...

dreamtree1234 · 06-09-2018, 07:36 AM

I ditto Cypher!

herbi7 · 06-09-2018, 10:56 AM

Let us know what you discover! ��

CMB · 06-09-2018, 12:09 PM

I have wondered this before. Some of my previous hamsters always seamed to take the same amount of treats even if offered more.

For example even if offered 6 sunflower seeds would only eat 4. But would then take a different treat when offered.

Drago · 06-09-2018, 06:08 PM

As far as scientists are concerned, rats and mice can count, but not quite as we do. Hamsters on the other hand, haven’t been studied in depth enough for us to truly know. The best we can base this off of, is how rats and mice count, and perceive time (I’d recommend reading up on some studies done on rodents to get a basic understanding). Hamsters have a very basic perception of time, and how exactly it is perceived by them, isn’t very well known sadly. I’ve now lost the link to the studies which highlighted that hamsters do indeed have a sense of time, but if memory serves right, they have a basic perception.

When approaching the topic of how an animal perceives something, one must understand that perception is subjective, and one cannot truly see into the mind of an animal. The other tricky part is understanding the results of an experiment. Sadly, many conclusions are quite far from the truth. Why an animal does something, isn’t always as black and white as we’d like it to be. One such example would be the famous story of the horse who could do math. He would strike his hoof to the ground a number of times which corresponded with the answer to the question he was asked. While it appeared he was actually performing simple mathematical analysis, he was actually just watching the body language of those who were asking him the questions. Once the person relaxed, due to the horse striking the correct number of times, he’d stop. This created the illusion that he was actually solving the problems rather than simply observing our behavior. Similar set-backs are faced with all other species. There are many components to an experiment in which we ask an animal to complete a task

1. What we mean by a “question” (a question being ambiguous, it could rather be, an experiment set up)
2. How we “ask” said question
3. How the animal perceives the question
4. How the animal actually responds, and believes it is being rewarded for
5. How we then analyze said behavior
6. How we draw conclusions based upon our observations.

So essentially, testing an animal’s ability to perform mathematical tasks, is extremely difficult to do. There are so many variables, and a large amount of difficulty when it comes to the translation between our intentions, how the animal perceives our intentions, how they react because of it, and how we perceive their reactions.

I’ll try to do some digging through documents and studies I have saved, and see if I can find anything of value. Regardless, it’s certainly an interesting topic to ponder

herbi7 · 06-10-2018, 01:56 AM

That's interesting Drago. I heard about the horse that can count. Similar to dogs trained to do tasks. Those kind of animals are acutely aware of our body language and tone of voice aren't they. I think hamsters are quite sophisticated as they retain a huge map of food sources and things in the wild but as to simple one two three I dunno! I think mine go very much by tone of voice a d pattern, cause and effect etc. Willow my first Syrian would wait when she'd got somewhere precarious going by my tone of voice as I warned her and she had to wait tfor me to get her down instead of leaping. She learnt it the hard way ��

Drago · 06-10-2018, 07:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by herbi7

That's interesting Drago. I heard about the horse that can count. Similar to dogs trained to do tasks. Those kind of animals are acutely aware of our body language and tone of voice aren't they. I think hamsters are quite sophisticated as they retain a huge map of food sources and things in the wild but as to simple one two three I dunno! I think mine go very much by tone of voice a d pattern, cause and effect etc. Willow my first Syrian would wait when she'd got somewhere precarious going by my tone of voice as I warned her and she had to wait tfor me to get her down instead of leaping. She learnt it the hard way ��

It’s funny really! On your point of complex food maps- yes, it does make total sense why hamsters may have those, but be unable to count. It all comes down to what an animal really needs to make of a situation, and how every organism views a situation through a different lens; focusing on different aspects for each one. The term was coined as “Umwelt”, or how each organism views the world in accordance to his/her biological needs. Another such example, would be the analogy of the tick and the human at the carnival. The human walking through the field, smells all the food, hears the sounds making them aware there is fun ahead, and watches all the other humans interact. The tick on the other hand, ignores, and completely misses the carnival- as it is largely unimportant to him. The tick notices the scent of large mammals, feels the intensity of the wind, and the length of the grass he is in. Both organisms are in the same situation, but view things entirely differently.

This ties in to a hamster’s ability to count as they likely never have to count, at least in the way we do. A complex food map would indeed serve them well, but doing math? Unlikely. Humans on the other hand, would be opposite. The way the hamster views the world, makes it unnecessary to perform mathematical analysis the way we do. One could argue that a hamster’s brain is plenty complex enough to perform such math, but if it doesn’t serve the hamster in some way, they’re highly unlikely to do so. Thus, even if they could, it’s unlikely they ever would. Just the same as the tick was capable of smelling the carnival food, but didn’t, simply because it served no purpose in his life.

Animals do respond to intonation quite well. It’s sad that we don’t really know of any animals that can solidly grasp human language. Shockingly, chinchillas appear to have the best skills in identifying human language. Due to this, they are often studied in auditory experiments done between different species of animal, to see how they comprehend... well... us! All in all, a very interesting subject, and one I’d like to see more studies on. Sadly, we can’t get a whole lot of studies as the abilities of hamsters are largely unimportant, outside of testing for things like mental disorders. A lovely topic nonetheless

Razor · 06-12-2018, 08:25 AM

I don't know about the scientific validity of hamsters counting, but I think from my experience with Gaby, they can at some degree. I used to try to train Gaby to lie on her back and eat on my hand, and usually this happened in a systematic manner, where I first giver her two mealworms, then flip her on to her back, a sunflower seed or two and then a third mealworm. She soon learnt that the third mealworm usually meant she'd end up in an uncomfortable position and starting refusing to eat the third mealworm for at least 10 minutes after the first two. Oh, and yes, she loves mealworms!

herbi7 · 06-12-2018, 10:50 AM

That's interesting razor. It's that magic number three isn't it! I wonder what would have happened if it had been 4. I think hams are very tuned to sequences of things and cause and effect and learn quickly what precedes something nice or nasty. But I sense their attention span may not last very long. I know when you're training a dog you're meant to give a response to a behaviour within a few seconds or the association doesn't work