ArticleCommunications biology2023
Quantity discrimination in newly hatched zebrafish suggests hardwired numerical abilities.
Article in Communications biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Categorical Representation of Numerosity in the Pigeon Entopallium: Coding Format and Temporal Dynamics.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Habituation with apparatus and group testing improves assessment of fish preferences.Journal of fish biology · 2025Article
- Assessment of Replicability and Efforts to Refine an Operant Conditioning Procedure for Larval Zebrafish.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Neural Basis of Number Sense in Larval Zebrafish.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Innate responses to numerousness reveal neural activation in different brain regions in newly-hatched visually naïve chicks.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Looks like home: numerosity, but not spatial frequency guides preference in zebrafish larvae (Danio rerio).Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Exploring the Importance of Environmental Complexity for Newly Hatched Zebrafish.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Interwoven processes in fish development: microbial community succession and immune maturation.PeerJ · 2024Review
- Embryonic exposure to artificial light at night impairs learning abilities and their covariance with behavioural traits in teleost fish.Biology letters · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An intriguing hypothesis to explain the ubiquity of numerical abilities is that all vertebrates are born with hardwired neuronal networks for processing numbers. To date, only studies on human foetuses have clearly supported this hypothesis. Zebrafish hatch 48-72 h after fertilisation with an embryonic nervous system, providing a unique opportunity for investigating this hypothesis. Here, we demonstrated that zebrafish larvae exposed to vertical bars at birth acquired an attraction for bar stimuli and we developed a numerical discrimination task based on this preference. When tested with a series of discriminations of increasing difficulty (1vs.4, 1vs.3, 1vs.2, and 2vs.4 bars), zebrafish larvae reliably selected the greater numerosity. The preference was significant when stimuli were matched for surface area, luminance, density, and convex hull, thereby suggesting a true capacity to process numerical information. Converging results from two phylogenetically distant species suggests that numerical abilities might be a hallmark feature of vertebrates' brains.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.