Thursday, September 04, 2008

That's Better than I Could Do

Elephants show flair for arithmetic - Times Online: "The elephant's memory is legendary, but in a large, grey surprise to science the mighty Asian elephant turns out to have a distinct flair for maths as well

Under carefully controlled experimental conditions — essentially comprising a large cage and two buckets of assorted fruit — one elephant at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo managed to get its sums right 87 per cent of the time. A slightly less gifted pachyderm across the country in Kyoto scored a still respectable 69 per cent."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where I come from 69 per cent is a D+. Hardly respectable. Surely they could have given the elephant a "gentleman's C".

Cap'n Bob said...

An elephant robs a liquor store. The cops come and interrogate the store's owner about the robbery.
"Can you describe the perpetrator," the cop asks.
"It was an elephant."
"Indian or African elephant," says the cop.
"How should I know?" the store owner replies.
"Indian elephants have small ears; African elephants have large ears," the cops says.
"What ears?" the store owner says. "He was wearing a stocking over his head."

I got a million of 'em.