How to teach your dog to count...

Yesterday we had adding machines that look like dogs, today we have dogs that act like adding machines.

http://www.odditycentral.com/news/meet-beau-the-canine-calculator.html

Perhaps this is another "Clever Hans" but the link above describes a black lab with a facility for math. If you are like me, and you feel that the definition of "sentience" is often too narrowly defined to include humans and exclude other animals, then you'll be impressed by the possibilities:

It all began with Dave laying out a single bone and teach Beau to bark once. Then he’d add another and teach him to bark twice. Then take one away and teach him to bark once, add more, take away more, until he got the trick. Eventually he learned to do math without the dog bones, and from there the questions got more complicated, although they tried to keep the answers below 10, to avid long barks.

Now, Beau can answer questions like ”If 3X equals 9, what does X equal?” by barking three times, “Nine minus five? ” by barking four times, how old he is, by barking 12 times, and can even tell how many people are present around him. He always ads +1 to the number of men, because he includes himself...

...But really now, how does a canine do calculus? Dave must signal him or something, right? In fact, he had a friend in Atlanta who was determined to prove he was signaling the dog, so he took Beau out on the back deck and asked him all kinds of questions for 30 minutes. When they returned, all the man had to say was “You know what? That dog’s a genius!”