Fish driving cars and chimps doing maths: what teaching animals ‘irrelevant’ skills reveals about our own minds
- Written by Scarlett Howard, Research Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University

Did you know goldfish can learn to drive cars? Have you heard bumblebees can learn to pull on a string? Would you believe some primates can perform calculations with Arabic numerals?
These tasks seem completely irrelevant to these animals in their natural environment, so why are researchers interested in them?
As someone...