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Mosquito fishes

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Posted on: March 5, 2011
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Mosquito fishes | Mosquito fishes can remember and identify digits

Mosquito fishesScientists are saying that not only human beings but also some fishes are able to count the number of things. Those fishes are nothing but Mosquito fishes. Mosquito fishes live in the ponds, eating the larva laid by mosquitoes. Hence these fishes are named as mosquito fishes. Recently an extensive research was done on the mosquito fishes. Many new things are discovered in that research.

Mosquito fishes have a brilliant skill of identifying the big bulk of things based on the quantity or volume without counting the number of things in that group from the other small group. In general only human beings have the skill of identifying the large group of things out of many groups of things based on the size of the group. But this special skill of the mosquito fishes is discovered in the research. This special skill of the mosquito fishes is equivalent to that of awareness of the college students. Just like human beings, mosquito fishes are able to identify the group which consists of more number of things just by looking at the many groups. For example, we human beings can identify the basket containing more balls from the two baskets containing 50 balls and 100 balls easily based on the quantity of balls visible.

Mosquito fishes live only in groups. They don’t live independently. If any mosquito fish is left alone, it joins in the group immediately as soon as possible. Scientists did the experiment by separating a mosquito fish from the group. They kept it in a separate water tank and arranged a single way to the water tank containing the group of fishes. Scientists have arranged some prints on that way. Initially the fish got confused but later it got habituated of going through the way to the group. Later scientists have arranged another way with half the prints to the water tank containing the group. Fish confused initially in the selection of the way it has to go. But it finally selected the initial way that got complete prints about the way to group. It understood that it can reach the group only if it goes through the way that got more prints. The experiment was repeated for different times and its skill was proved every time. Scientists have increased the number of prints on the ways to the water tank containing group in the order of 4, 8, — to 100, 200. But the fishes never made a wrong attempt. From these experiments, scientists came to the conclusion that mosquito fishes are capable of remembering and identifying the more number of digits.

Later scientists have decreased the gap between the numbers of prints on the two ways. Then the fish struggled a little. For example, human beings also cannot distinguish the basket containing 16 balls and the basket containing 18 balls immediately at an instant. Later scientists have selected 25 college students and conducted the similar experiment on them. From the results of the experiment, scientists concluded that mosquito fishes and college students have almost similar awareness about the identification of quantity of things by looking.

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