October
28, 2015
The
humble guppy may not look like the smartest fish in the school, but research
conducted by Associate Professor Culum Brown, from the Department of Biological
Sciences at Macquarie University, and colleagues from the University of Padova,
has shown that they are far smarter than we thought. Their research, published
in Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience, examined the ability of guppies
to count.
"We
found that guppies that have very strongly lateralised brains are better at
counting than those that have non-lateralised brains," said Professor
Brown.
Scientists
have often wondered why humans and other animals have lateralised brains, where
the two halves of their brain execute different functions. In humans, for example, the
left hemisphere is often associated with language and maths, while the right
hemisphere is more
artistic. One theory suggests that having strongly lateralised brains allows
each hemisphere to analyse information separately.
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