--- title: Surprising brains: tool-using fish, counting bees, laughing rats and clever pigs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Surprising brains: tool-using fish, counting bees, laughing rats and clever pigs», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A honeybee's brain is about the size of a grain of sand, yet in tests bees learned to cou --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Surprising brains: tool-using fish, co… # Surprising brains: tool-using fish, counting bees, laughing rats and clever pigs Lesson 388 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/0/) — A honeybee's brain is about the size of a grain of sand, yet in tests bees learned to count landmarks up to about four to find sugar water. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/1/) — Small brains can do surprising things when their cells are well connected. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/2/) — A tuskfish has no hands, so it carries a clam in its mouth and whacks it on a rock until it cracks: the rock is its anvil. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/3/) — People once thought only humans used tools; now we know birds, apes, otters and even fish do. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/4/) — Tickled rats make very high chirps, too high for us to hear without special equipment, and come back for more. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/5/) — Scientists think these chirps are a kind of laughter. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/6/) — Pigs found hidden food using a mirror, and a tiny jumping spider can plan a detour, losing sight of its prey and still sneaking up from behind. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/7/) — There is no single ladder of cleverness with humans at the top: each animal is clever in the ways its own life needs. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/8/) — Scientists put a coloured mark on cleaner wrasse fish, and some rubbed it off after seeing it in a mirror; whether this means they know themselves is still argued. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/9/) — The tuskfish carries a clam in its mouth and smashes it on a rock, using the rock as an anvil. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/10/) — In tests honeybees learned to fly past a certain number of landmarks, up to about four, to find sugar water. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/11/) — Bees were reported to learn that an empty card means less than one, a bit like zero, though this is still argued. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/12/) — Bumblebees were reported to roll little balls again and again with no sugar reward, one of the first reports of play in an insect. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/13/) — Tickled rats make very high chirps that people cannot hear without special equipment, and they come back for more tickles. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/14/) — In one study pigs saw food in a mirror and walked round the wall to find the real food, and pigs learned to move a joystick with their snouts in a simple video game. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/15/) — Some jumping spiders plan a detour, losing sight of their prey before sneaking up from behind; they have eight eyes, and the two big front ones see sharp details. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/16/) — A honeybee brain has about a million nerve cells, and a human brain about 86 billion. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/17/) — Crows and parrots pack many nerve cells into small brains, so they are cleverer than their brain size suggests. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/388-surprising-brains-tool-using-fish-counting-bees-laughing-rats-and-clever-pigs/18/) — Different animals are clever in different ways: a squirrel remembers hundreds of buried nuts, a bee its flower map, a dog our moods. - ← previous: [Clever primates: tool-using chimps, Kanzi the bonobo and Ayumu's memory](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/387-clever-primates-tool-using-chimps-kanzi-the-bonobo-and-ayumu-s-memory/) - next →: [How scientists test animal minds: the mirror test, puzzle boxes and Clever Hans](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/389-how-scientists-test-animal-minds-the-mirror-test-puzzle-boxes-and-clever-hans/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)