Can animals learn Calculus?

Question

is it possible to teach a gorilla or a dog calculus? or is it just impossible because they don't have the brain capacity?

Answer 1

Considering how hard a time I had trying to teach calculus to Harvard Summer School students, I'd be strongly inclined to say No. ;)

Seriously -- think of intelligence as a collection of various different kinds of pattern recognition (or even more precisely, pattern-response mechanisms). Animals are very smart about SOME kinds of patterns. For example, I don't think I could build a nest from a pile of twigs nearly as well as a bird could, nor can I judge a difficult jump as well as my cat can.

But no animal I've known or heard of can recognize or deal with logical abstractions NEARLY as sophisticated as those of calculus.

Answer 2

No. It has been tried.

René Descartes developed analytic geometry, which was crucial to the development of calculus.

Descartes once attempted to teach his horse to just recognize, not use, the cartesian coordinate system. The horse, however, refused to learn. Thus arose the maxim: Do not put Descartes before the horse.

Answer 3

Animals? Hmmm, let's see...

Animalia (Kingdom)
..Chordata (Phylum)
....Mammalia (Class)
......Primates (Order)
........Hominidae (Family)
..........Homo (Genus)
............Homo sapiens (Species)

Yup...animals can learn calculus - well, some of us can.

As for dogs and gorillas, not a chance. This is not to say that some far distant descendant species or genetically modifed creature derived from dogs or gorillas couldn't, but the contemporary dog and gorilla types simply have not the capacity.

Answer 4

it is too difficult and it takes much time, but it is possible.

Answer 5

no - just multiplication





its natural.....