David Charters: How do they know that fish can count?

Mar 11 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

"WHAT a chump!” said my wife, as she sat at the dinette table in a rather fetching pair of pyjamas, examining the final offerings from a raspberry-red box of chocolates, which had been shaped into a romantic heart for St Valentine’s Day.

I was sitting on a spread of newspapers, carefully laid over the Italian tiles on the other side of the kitchen sink, scooping mud from the rugby boots of our 12-year-old son.

“What a chump!” repeated my wife, while I felt the chill of the floor seep though my buttocks.

“Who, me?” I volunteered, as an almost automatic response.

“No, not you, silly,” she said, warmly, “but they have been talking about this biologist on the wireless. He claims that God is a delusion. Surely, though, without a God, there would be no Heaven and that would leave people with nothing to believe in, no hope for the future. They say this fellow is absolutely brilliant, but it seems that he is inviting everyone to back a loser and that’s not very clever, is it?”

“Well, you know what scientists are like,” I said, shifting my position on the floor to ease the rheumatism. “They need evidence for everything and that will leave us with no mysteries. Anyway, I see from this snippet in the paper that scientists at Padua University, Italy, have discovered that fish can count up to four, which helps them identify shoals.”

“Gosh,” said my wife, “without fingers? That’s only six behind you.”

“I know,” I said, “and that’s probably just your average fish. I expect the bright ones can count to five or six. Perhaps a real teacher’s pet, who swots at home instead of playing with his chums, could eventually tackle quadratic equations.”

“Education, education, education,” said my wife.

“You know, the best mathematicians I ever met were darts players,” I said.

“I think you will find that even the most versatile fish will creep towards the dartboard with the hesitancy of an atheist approaching the altar,” responded my wife with an impish smile.

By then, my mind had wandered back to a pub in another age. On the bar beneath a Perspex dome sat a proud pork pie, whose crust was being explored by a bloated fly. Men in jeans rolled cigarettes over wrought-iron tables and young women left lipstick stains on the rims of their glasses.

Philosophers gripped tankards and their wise words were punctuated by the thud of darts hitting the target set in the wall, across the patched carpet, in the corner of the room. By the target was a blackboard, where there stood a man with a stick of chalk, calculating the throwers’ scores at a pace to beat any computer.

I gazed through the window on the backdoor at the line of roofs beyond our garden and saw that a dove had perched on a TV aerial, preening himself, before embarking on a series of physical jerks, similar to those followed by company executives, who spend their lunch-hours in the gym.

“How do they know that fish can count?” asked my wife, breaking the brief silence.

“The study is based on a mosquito fish,” I replied. “The university’s spokesman, Christian Agrillo, said it provided the first evidence that fish have rudimentary mathematical abilities. Actually, when I was little, people thought eating fish was good for the brain, though in my case a whole whale wouldn’t have been enough. But it just shows there was some truth in those old wives’ tales.

“These days, however, I think that long hair is often the sign of a thinking chap.”

“But fish are bald,” said my wife. She is, of course, right about that – and so many other things.

Nonetheless, it is gratifying to see that young men are again growing their hair in the style of Biblical prophets or 1960s rock guitarists – defying that ugly and persistent fashion for shaven heads, associated with disagreeable behaviour. If one of those scientists was to invent a rejuvenating potion, I would let my hair flow again.

Sociologists are always trying to determine the divisions in our society. But long, clean and well-groomed hair is very much the mark of the civilised young chap, who senses that his songs and poems (though we should be a little cautious here) are more likely to win the admiration of the girl, than the sweat of his contemporary, who grows muscles pedalling an exercise bike in the gym.

So today we have numerate fish, boot polishers, bar-room philosophers, romantics, body-conscious doves, atheistic priests in white laboratory jackets and dart-throwers. There must be a God.

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk