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Clever Hans, Part 1: The Equine Mathematician · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
0:31
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. We are recording on what was
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Speaker 1: once called Friday, and what a week it's been. Uh.
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Speaker 1: This is an episode that I think all three of
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Speaker 1: us have been looking forward to, and we kept we
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Speaker 1: kept needing to push it off further and further. So
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Speaker 1: we've had a lot of time to think about weird
0:51
Speaker 1: tangents and that may show up in today's episode. Uh my,
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Speaker 1: my weird tangent for this is related to peep Show.
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Speaker 1: I love it, Mitchell and Webb production. Uh, the entire time,
1:03
Speaker 1: always watching Peep Show, I was certain that one of
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Speaker 1: the characters was named Super Hand, like his hands were
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Speaker 1: super anyway, I'm Ben, I'm no, yeah, but in fact
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Speaker 1: he's Super Hans, like the German name, the name that
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Speaker 1: I associate with Hans Brinker and the silver skates. Do
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Speaker 1: you know that story? Yeah? I think more Hans a Gretel,
1:24
Speaker 1: but yeah, the silver skates. What's that? I I don't
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Speaker 1: remember what happens and m I just know he's he's
1:29
Speaker 1: a he's an ice skater and he has these silver skates.
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Speaker 1: And they're somehow blessed with the power of the gods.
1:34
Speaker 1: Then there's Hans Christian Anderson. He's a big as well. Right. Uh,
1:39
Speaker 1: who's you have? We've got Hans Zimmer. Uh, the famous
1:43
Speaker 1: film composer, Hans and Franz. That's yeah, well that one
1:47
Speaker 1: has an aged very well. That one's a stereotype. But
1:51
Speaker 1: you know always ages very well. As our super producer
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Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. You know, no, I always think of Hans
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Speaker 1: and Gretel. Uh, hansl Wait, it's Hans and but you
2:03
Speaker 1: can call him Hans for sure, no doubt. If you're
2:05
Speaker 1: if you're friends, right, Uh, yeah, it's it's strange. I
2:08
Speaker 1: think it's a cool nickname. We actually have a new
2:11
Speaker 1: coworker in our virtual office named Hans. I believe am
2:14
Speaker 1: I making that up? We have a Hans. You've got
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Speaker 1: a Hans. He's he's in charge of all the Will
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Speaker 1: Ferrell stuff, the Big Money Players network. That's right, That's right,
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Speaker 1: We'll go you Hans. Uh. Hans is a great name.
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Speaker 1: I still think super hands. It's a funny name. Today's
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Speaker 1: episode is about a Hans, a very intelligent Hans, Hans
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Speaker 1: who was so intelligent in fact, that he was known
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Speaker 1: as Clever Hans uh, and it was all due to
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Speaker 1: his mathematical prowess. I don't know how cool would it be,
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Speaker 1: like if you had a descriptor for your name like
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Speaker 1: blank case your blank knoll or uh blank bend, like
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Speaker 1: you know, magnificent casey or uh numismatic Noel. I don't
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Speaker 1: know that's that's like it sounds like the type of
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Speaker 1: nickname one might give themselves, and the hopes that people
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Speaker 1: did not realize that was the case. But that was
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Speaker 1: definitely not the case with Clever Hans because surprise, surprise,
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Speaker 1: Clever Hans not a human a horse, right, A horse
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Speaker 1: is a horse? Of course, of course, remember Mr Ed.
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Speaker 1: I think they made him look like he was talking
3:22
Speaker 1: by putting peanut butter on his teeth, so he would
3:25
Speaker 1: like eat the peanut butter off his teeth and then
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Speaker 1: they would like, you know, do bad like lip syncy
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Speaker 1: kind of horse lines. Well, a lot of the a
3:33
Speaker 1: lot of the plot points seemed relatively anticlimactic upon a rewatch,
3:38
Speaker 1: But you know, I missed those days where TV executives
3:41
Speaker 1: were apparently like just catch us on a good day
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Speaker 1: and throws the craziest things you can imagine at us
3:47
Speaker 1: we might say yes to what kind of like how
3:49
Speaker 1: podcasting used to be. But things things are tightening up
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Speaker 1: a little bit, I would say, largely for the better.
3:55
Speaker 1: But speaking of you know, golden times, you know, for culture. Uh,
4:00
Speaker 1: there was a time in the early twentieth century when
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Speaker 1: the public was fascinated with this idea of wonder animals,
4:08
Speaker 1: which were domesticated animals that could do everything from uh,
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Speaker 1: solve riddles, um, do math problems, even somehow you know,
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Speaker 1: have discourse with their owners about things as high minded
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Speaker 1: as as philosophy, or even predict the weather in some
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Speaker 1: cases tell people's fortunes by you know, pulling a strip
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Speaker 1: of paper with a message on it, forth from some
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Speaker 1: collection of strips of paper. This story takes place in
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Speaker 1: that era, in the realm of the wonder animal fad.
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Speaker 1: It's almost it was almost too extreme to be known
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Speaker 1: as of fad because it was so prevalent, was so
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Speaker 1: ubiquitous at the time. So Hans, as you said, Noel
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Speaker 1: is a horse, and according to the public at the time,
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Speaker 1: he was a very very, very very lever horse. According
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Speaker 1: to a German math teacher named Wilhelm Vaughan, Austin. Just
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Speaker 1: see that's the right pronunciation. Is it with an O?
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Speaker 1: Or with it? Probably with an oh? Isn't it Osten?
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Speaker 1: Maybe it's astin Osten. There we go, it's got that Austen. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: So Vaughan Ousten is is a guy who is determined
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Speaker 1: to prove the full potential for intelligence in the animal kingdom.
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Speaker 1: And he went through a number of phases, a couple
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Speaker 1: of also rans. Right. He he taught a cat, or
5:36
Speaker 1: he tried to teach a cat and a bear how
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Speaker 1: to add and then he came up with his like
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Speaker 1: crowning success, which was this horse Hans. And we have
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Speaker 1: to mention too that before this time, psychologist and the
5:50
Speaker 1: general public, experts and layman alike didn't really think about
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Speaker 1: whether animals had all those kind of those cognitive pieces
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Speaker 1: that we just considered part of the human existence, like emotions, consciousness, intelligence.
6:06
Speaker 1: I know, every pet owner out here is like, my
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Speaker 1: dog has all three or my cat is a monster
6:12
Speaker 1: or something. Well, and you know we've talked about this
6:13
Speaker 1: and got all the time. I mean, how humans kind
6:16
Speaker 1: of have this desire to make everything human like and
6:19
Speaker 1: to kind of anthropomorphize you know, animals. Um, that's why
6:23
Speaker 1: I like animal cartoons that like walk around and where
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Speaker 1: pants are so popular. I remember that guy that that
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Speaker 1: drew the cats wearing pants. That was a huge craze
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Speaker 1: that we talked to Gabe about. I've already forgotten his
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Speaker 1: name because I'm a bad person, but I remember the
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Speaker 1: cats wearing pants and how popular they were, And it's
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Speaker 1: because people love to do that, to see ourselves in
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Speaker 1: cute and cuddly creatures, even when none of those traits exists. So,
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Speaker 1: for example, you know, we'd like to think that that
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Speaker 1: a horse or a raccoon or some other creature could
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Speaker 1: do these things and we are able to imbue them
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Speaker 1: with humanlike powers. But chances are they've been heavily trained
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Speaker 1: and are responding to very specific cues and are essentially
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Speaker 1: just you know, performing wrote tasks at the behest of
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Speaker 1: a trainer or master. Um. Not to spoil anything, but
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Speaker 1: this whole thing does kind of blow up, uh in
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Speaker 1: the face of of von Austin and also the whole
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Speaker 1: culture of animal wonder animals um as well. Yeah, so
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Speaker 1: Clever Hans is sort of the harbinger or the catalyst
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Speaker 1: for what would come to be this enormous wonder animal
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Speaker 1: fat or era. So in the early nineteen hundreds, Clever
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Speaker 1: Hans starts getting into the news, the media of the day, because,
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Speaker 1: as you would alluded to knowl he could solve math
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Speaker 1: problems or appear to do so, and pretty complex ones
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Speaker 1: like not just adding four plus seven plus nine divided
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Speaker 1: by two or something like that. But he could apparently
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Speaker 1: also do square roots and carry on simple conversations, all
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Speaker 1: by a primitive of uh form of communication. He would
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Speaker 1: tap his hoofs so, hey, Hans, how many garbonzo beans
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Speaker 1: are in this line? And Hans would be like and like,
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Speaker 1: WHOA three beans? That's amazing. And if I'm not mistaken,
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Speaker 1: when Mr Ed didn't want to be heard by other
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Speaker 1: humans besides his master, he would do stuff very similar
8:24
Speaker 1: to that. If you wanted to communicate with Wilbur but
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Speaker 1: someone else is in the room, he would buck his
8:29
Speaker 1: head or stomp his foot to like indicate. So I'm
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Speaker 1: pretty sure that that character was probably inspired by all
8:35
Speaker 1: this wonder animal business. But that's just me conjecturing there. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think you're on the spot there, because the creators
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Speaker 1: had to be aware of it. Because Clever Hans is
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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, Mr Ed is nineteen sixties. I still,
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Speaker 1: you know, I'm not the expert on the world building
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Speaker 1: or mythology of Mr. Ed, but I don't understand why
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Speaker 1: they had to keep him a secret, you know what
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Speaker 1: I mean? Why can't it just be like, hey, this
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Speaker 1: worse can talk to you. People love that. People love animals,
9:01
Speaker 1: and they love the idea of animals talking, except for
9:04
Speaker 1: maybe cats. I said, I know, I sound like I'm
9:06
Speaker 1: being in on cats, but I have to here, and
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Speaker 1: you've probably heard them on the show. So clever Hans
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Speaker 1: is not the first of these incredibly intelligent animals, at
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Speaker 1: least to the mind of the German public. He's just
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Speaker 1: the most popular, and he's kind of writing a trend
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Speaker 1: in the Zeitgeist. People were interested in seeing the intellectual
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Speaker 1: abilities of non human animals because they thought it could
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Speaker 1: imply further things, things that went beyond intelligence to the
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Speaker 1: realm of the metaphysical. If an animal can debate philosophy
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Speaker 1: with us, the reasoning goes, might it not also have sentience?
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Speaker 1: Might it not also have something like a soul? It's
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Speaker 1: a profound and noble question. But also, you know, this
9:58
Speaker 1: is a world where um magitians and like traveling shows
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Speaker 1: had trained horses, dogs, parrots, peacocks, things like that to
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Speaker 1: appear to be capable of reading and writing. Ben, I
10:18
Speaker 1: remembering a hard time remembering all of the details. And
10:22
Speaker 1: we do a lot of these and they get a
10:23
Speaker 1: little fuzzy over time. But we did an episode about
10:26
Speaker 1: like a farm that was stocked with these kind of
10:30
Speaker 1: show animals that would do tricks and like a chicken
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Speaker 1: that could solve math problems in sort of like a
10:36
Speaker 1: skinner box type of situation by pecking on things. Remember this?
10:39
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, what was the deal with that one?
10:42
Speaker 1: I feel like I shouldn't even bring it up if
10:44
Speaker 1: we don't have any remotely identifiable characteristics about it other
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Speaker 1: than they were like smart animals. It turned into a
10:50
Speaker 1: TV phenomenon and then like it all kind of like
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Speaker 1: fell out of fashion, and I feel like, yeah, exactly,
10:57
Speaker 1: someone screaming the name about this at us right now,
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Speaker 1: But hopefully it's endearing, dear ridiculous historians that we sometimes
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Speaker 1: cannot remember our own show. But it's I bring it
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Speaker 1: up because this was part of kind of a traveling
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Speaker 1: showman type world. You know, before TV, um magicians and
11:16
Speaker 1: traveling performers had often trained horses and dogs and pigeons
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Speaker 1: to do all kinds of things ranging from you know,
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Speaker 1: tricks and climbing up you know, those kind of poles
11:26
Speaker 1: with the little rungs on the side, and diving horses
11:29
Speaker 1: and all of that kind of thing that we probably
11:31
Speaker 1: remember from movies. And also even like the idea of
11:35
Speaker 1: having performing flee circuses, which is usually like a total
11:40
Speaker 1: ruse I believe, where there was no actual fleas in
11:42
Speaker 1: there and it was just little things attached to fishing lines.
11:45
Speaker 1: Don't ruin this, don'll ruin this for me, dude, I'm
11:47
Speaker 1: really sorry, dude, I hate to be the best. Also, also,
11:50
Speaker 1: bro wrestling not real. That's fine, that's kind of series
11:54
Speaker 1: that's not near the level of entertainment that a flee circuses.
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Speaker 1: That's totally fair. But we start seeing these tricks getting
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Speaker 1: a little more advanced, like teaching uh, some of these
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Speaker 1: animals to appear to be reading or doing arithmetic. There
12:08
Speaker 1: was even a quote learned English dog that could supposedly
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Speaker 1: lecture on ancient Greek poetry in the seventeen fifties. I
12:19
Speaker 1: don't know how they could confirm that. Um, we'll have
12:22
Speaker 1: to do more research than that point. Well, well, uh,
12:27
Speaker 1: we can confirm that it probably wasn't, you know, a
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Speaker 1: college level discourse. But also that's not the only smart
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Speaker 1: dog in town or in the world. At this time,
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Speaker 1: there was a French lecturer who had what was described
12:43
Speaker 1: as a little savant dog that would assist him in
12:46
Speaker 1: demonstrating properties of physics. And at this point, you know,
12:52
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us here in twenty have
12:53
Speaker 1: a different association with the phrase wonder, because wonder now
12:59
Speaker 1: is sort of always automatically a good thing, right, But
13:03
Speaker 1: back then, wonder referred to something that didn't quite fit
13:09
Speaker 1: in to the natural order of things or the divine orders.
13:13
Speaker 1: So it could something that's wonder, wonderful or wondrous, could
13:17
Speaker 1: be a miracle like sprouting wings or healing suddenly from
13:21
Speaker 1: a wound, but it could also be infernal, diabolical, dark,
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Speaker 1: and occulted. So wonder animals were kind of edgy too.
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Speaker 1: That's really interesting, Ben, I think of like this, the
13:33
Speaker 1: Eight Wonders of the World and stuff like that, So
13:35
Speaker 1: I guess you're right, it could have a negative condition
13:37
Speaker 1: with the nails. To think of Professor Martfolio's House of Wonders,
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Speaker 1: you know, almost a stand in for like the word
13:45
Speaker 1: oddities or like a freak show or something. Right, Um,
13:48
Speaker 1: so this sort of does skirt that line, doesn't. It's
13:51
Speaker 1: not as despicable and abusive as like say Carnie freak
13:54
Speaker 1: show type situation where you're literally exploiting human beings. But
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Speaker 1: it's also not the best for you know, kind of
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Speaker 1: exploiting these animals and making on making them kind of
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Speaker 1: prants around for the amusement of others. I feel as
14:06
Speaker 1: though they prefer to do other things than that, you know,
14:10
Speaker 1: But I guess the livings a living if you're a schnauzer,
14:13
Speaker 1: No cat food for you until you can fully explain
14:16
Speaker 1: the concept of the of Plato's cavern or or the
14:20
Speaker 1: very least the Pythagorean theorem, right, jeez uh, we all
14:25
Speaker 1: have to have jobs. Why what about you, Fido or
14:27
Speaker 1: Tiger or whatever your name is. So this is there.
14:30
Speaker 1: There's another factor here that's pretty interesting, and it's one
14:34
Speaker 1: that I don't know about, you guys. I had not
14:36
Speaker 1: given a lot of thought to this previously. I never
14:39
Speaker 1: thought about when widespread pet ownership began because growing up
14:45
Speaker 1: here in the West and in this day and age,
14:49
Speaker 1: it's even if you don't have a pet. It's common
14:51
Speaker 1: for other people to have pets, you know, they have
14:53
Speaker 1: their dogs, have their cats and their paracats, They have
14:55
Speaker 1: their serpents, their cockatoos, their rocks, their herm craps. Whatever.
15:00
Speaker 1: Point is, a lot of people have pets. But back
15:03
Speaker 1: at this time, widespread pet ownership was just becoming a thing.
15:07
Speaker 1: Animals were around as sources of food and labor, as livestock,
15:12
Speaker 1: and you had to be pretty upper crust to just
15:16
Speaker 1: have a dog because you liked the dog, you know
15:19
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like a shizu uh shizu was just
15:24
Speaker 1: for the elite. Schissy as a companion dog doesn't really
15:27
Speaker 1: do anything, right, Shissy doesn't really apply here because I
15:30
Speaker 1: believe it's from ancient China. But but that's the point,
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Speaker 1: Like you have to be doing pretty well in life
15:36
Speaker 1: to just afford this distraction, this companion that doesn't do anything.
15:42
Speaker 1: You're not gonna eat it. It's not gonna work for you.
15:45
Speaker 1: Oh well, let me let me get an extra mouth
15:47
Speaker 1: to feed. How about that? That's a flex right there,
15:49
Speaker 1: you know, I mean talk about weird flexes, historical or otherwise,
15:53
Speaker 1: literally choosing to have this kind of useless thing. Okay,
15:58
Speaker 1: I'm clearly not a pet person when it's say this
16:01
Speaker 1: prancing around with you that you have to feed and
16:03
Speaker 1: clothe and take care of, and you know, sometimes in
16:05
Speaker 1: the case of very extra pet parents clothes, put a
16:08
Speaker 1: little sweaters on him and stuff. Victor Hugo of Les
16:12
Speaker 1: miserab fame um was was such a pet owner. He
16:16
Speaker 1: had a beloved poodle whose name seems to be lost
16:20
Speaker 1: to the historical record or at least this Atlas Obscure
16:23
Speaker 1: article that we're looking at, but apparently so beloved was
16:27
Speaker 1: Victor Hugo's poodle, and so well treated was this beast
16:31
Speaker 1: that it actually escaped and made the homeward bound esque
16:36
Speaker 1: journey from Moscow back to Paris to be reunited with Hugo.
16:40
Speaker 1: So we definitely know that that there is a bond
16:44
Speaker 1: between animals and their owners that's kind of approaching something
16:49
Speaker 1: like love. Is it, you know, just pure survival instinct?
16:53
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, if a poodle would make
16:56
Speaker 1: that journey just to get back to the master's probably
16:59
Speaker 1: for more than just you know, self preservation, right sure. Well,
17:03
Speaker 1: way before there was widespread middle class ownership of pets,
17:07
Speaker 1: dogs had been so so profoundly domesticated right there. It's
17:14
Speaker 1: interesting there. We there are a lot of animals that
17:16
Speaker 1: can be tamed, but the number of animals that we
17:18
Speaker 1: would consider domesticated, that that number is actually very very small. Uh.
17:23
Speaker 1: You know, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, by the way,
17:28
Speaker 1: domesticated themselves, They're not even really on the list. So
17:31
Speaker 1: dogs do experience, as will come to find, dogs do
17:34
Speaker 1: experience emotions similar to those of humans. But this wasn't
17:39
Speaker 1: something that the scientific community really grocked or got their
17:43
Speaker 1: arms around at this time. We just knew that pets
17:46
Speaker 1: appeared to be able to do some remarkable things. But
17:52
Speaker 1: in any testing case in the eighteenth and nineteen century, uh,
17:58
Speaker 1: it turned out that these are incredible claims didn't hold
18:02
Speaker 1: up to scrutiny. A lot like people claiming to be
18:05
Speaker 1: um mediums or to exercise some sort of supernatural power.
18:10
Speaker 1: You see numerous reports of otherwise very very intelligent people saying,
18:15
Speaker 1: you know, my dog knows philosophy, not just in German
18:19
Speaker 1: but also in Latin. My dog knows Latin. And and
18:22
Speaker 1: then when someone tried to exhibit this for a critical audience,
18:28
Speaker 1: they would find that those claims just didn't didn't bear up.
18:32
Speaker 1: And that's the world in which Wilhelm Vaughan Oustin. Very
18:37
Speaker 1: good then, thanks man, thanks, I was in my head,
18:40
Speaker 1: I was practicing this. Uh, this is the world in
18:42
Speaker 1: which van Oustin emerges. He is he's already had a
18:46
Speaker 1: long career as a high school math teacher, he's retired.
18:51
Speaker 1: He's a nineteenth century Berlin, and he gets fascinated with
18:55
Speaker 1: this idea, right, He's desperately looking for something to fill
18:58
Speaker 1: his twilight years. Where uh so why not you know,
19:02
Speaker 1: teach animals to like do math and and and teach
19:05
Speaker 1: classes for him? That'd be fun. Um. So, you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: he definitely believed it seems that animal minds were very
19:15
Speaker 1: similar to those of children, human children. And he actually
19:19
Speaker 1: used some of the classroom techniques that he had, you know,
19:23
Speaker 1: uh learned as a teacher himself, to work with his
19:28
Speaker 1: Arabian stallion hans Um and his his notion was that
19:33
Speaker 1: he was teaching hans not training him. So it's one
19:36
Speaker 1: of these things too where it's like I think he
19:39
Speaker 1: believed what he was doing. I don't think he was
19:41
Speaker 1: setting out to like, you know, built a bunch of
19:44
Speaker 1: rubes out of like, you know, their nickels or whatever. Um,
19:48
Speaker 1: But let's see, let's see how the story goes. So
19:50
Speaker 1: within a couple of years, Hans learned to count and
19:55
Speaker 1: then do like basic math, and like you said at
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Speaker 1: the top, been using that uh, that series of hoof
20:01
Speaker 1: taps uh. New York Times reported on this in nineteen
20:05
Speaker 1: o four and was pretty glowing in their reviews. He
20:09
Speaker 1: said that he could do what that, Hans could do
20:11
Speaker 1: almost everything but talk, uh, and that included he could
20:15
Speaker 1: tell time, UM, he could differentiate between different objects. Um,
20:21
Speaker 1: you know, like like different coins made of different material,
20:23
Speaker 1: whether it be silver or gold, etcetera. And Von Austin
20:27
Speaker 1: Um really wanted to separate Hans from all that other
20:31
Speaker 1: stuff we were talking about before. Hans was different. Hans
20:35
Speaker 1: wasn't one of these like weirdo oddity freak show animals.
20:39
Speaker 1: He really was a learned of course in the in
20:42
Speaker 1: the in the eyes of of his of the mind
20:44
Speaker 1: of his owner. Um. And so he really kind of
20:47
Speaker 1: pushed that line, which I think is what got it
20:49
Speaker 1: so much more attention, because you know, those traveling Carni
20:52
Speaker 1: type shows we were talking about, that's just part of Americana.
20:55
Speaker 1: Everyone was used to that. There was something special about
20:57
Speaker 1: that this kind of elevated into the next level, to
21:00
Speaker 1: the point where the fricking New York Times is writing
21:02
Speaker 1: about it, right, yeah, and this becomes something that is
21:05
Speaker 1: debated in Salon's intellectual meeting places of the day. Let's
21:17
Speaker 1: build out further one of the profound implications of this.
21:21
Speaker 1: If science is proving that animals possess something like a
21:26
Speaker 1: consciousness and therefore possibly something like the metaphysical concept of
21:31
Speaker 1: a soul, then religious figures get involved, and scientific figures
21:36
Speaker 1: get involved, often with contradictory aims. Because Charles Darwin's theory
21:41
Speaker 1: of evolution still real hot new thing. This is before
21:46
Speaker 1: everybody kind of forgot that his weird serial killeresque habit
21:50
Speaker 1: of eating every animal he cataloged, he uh, he had
21:54
Speaker 1: proposed in eighteen seventy two that animals and humans had
21:59
Speaker 1: a share emotional inheritance from evolution, that all animals are
22:04
Speaker 1: all you know, mammals at least could experience surprise, grief,
22:08
Speaker 1: and pain, And for some religious figures this could be
22:13
Speaker 1: seen as a threat to humanity's previous special status as
22:19
Speaker 1: the only creature on earth with thoughts and feelings, which
22:23
Speaker 1: seems like a lot to pull from you know, tap
22:26
Speaker 1: tap tap tap tap kind of conversations. But there we are. Okay,
22:31
Speaker 1: so we've basically established how clever Hans would communicate. But
22:37
Speaker 1: maybe we can go in a little more detail about this.
22:43
Speaker 1: So he had, as he said, it was very important
22:45
Speaker 1: to him, very important of an Ousten that he was
22:48
Speaker 1: teaching Hans right, not training him, and he did this
22:52
Speaker 1: for more than a decade. Typically he would ask Hans
22:56
Speaker 1: a question and Hans would either not his head for
22:59
Speaker 1: a year us or a no, or he would tap
23:03
Speaker 1: his foot his hoof rather to indicate numbers. He was
23:08
Speaker 1: also said to be able to show directions by turning
23:11
Speaker 1: his head. He could tell the difference between left and right.
23:14
Speaker 1: He could recognize colors, he could read clocks, he could
23:17
Speaker 1: identify playing cards, and he understood a large number of concepts.
23:22
Speaker 1: Uh So, von Oastin would ask something like how much
23:26
Speaker 1: is two fifths plus one half? And then Hans would answer,
23:30
Speaker 1: I barely know the answer to that. I'd have to,
23:32
Speaker 1: you know, do some do some figure And math's never
23:36
Speaker 1: been my strong suit. But yeah, it's true. I mean
23:38
Speaker 1: it's certainly for a guy like me, you know, who
23:41
Speaker 1: can barely add fractions, I certainly be impressed. I mean,
23:44
Speaker 1: it's it's weird right that this horse says appears to
23:47
Speaker 1: be pretty great with fractions. Hans would answer that question
23:50
Speaker 1: how much is two five plus one half by tapping
23:54
Speaker 1: nine times? Oh wait, now I have to count the
23:57
Speaker 1: taps by tapping nine times, probably not that fast, and
24:04
Speaker 1: then tapping ten more times, and that answer would be
24:06
Speaker 1: interpreted as two fifths plus one half is nine tenths
24:11
Speaker 1: And people were like, whoa do you do you think
24:13
Speaker 1: there was ever a moment where clever Hans maybe hesitated
24:16
Speaker 1: before the ninth tap, and people were just on the
24:18
Speaker 1: edge of their seat, like, is he gonna get it?
24:20
Speaker 1: So the only taps eight times, I'm no longer impressed. Taps,
24:28
Speaker 1: I hope for fun. I love the idea of being
24:30
Speaker 1: entertained by math. You know what, there probably was a
24:33
Speaker 1: little bit of that tension. Uh, we'll see why. Well,
24:37
Speaker 1: we'll see why that probably existed. But apparently Hans was
24:41
Speaker 1: even good at word problems. Like the bane of so
24:45
Speaker 1: many grade school kids. He seemed to have a pensant
24:50
Speaker 1: for recognizing language, recognizing even cleverly worded questions. And this
24:56
Speaker 1: comes from a fabulous article on amusing and it dot
25:00
Speaker 1: com clever Hans the horse who could do math um. So,
25:04
Speaker 1: for example, let's say I said to Hans, I have
25:07
Speaker 1: a number in mind. I subtract nine and have three
25:10
Speaker 1: as a remainder. What is the number I had in mind?
25:14
Speaker 1: And then he uses this pregnant pause followed by twelve
25:19
Speaker 1: riveting hoof taps. Okay, and that's the answer. Boom, the
25:23
Speaker 1: crowd goes wild and again. These are examples from this
25:26
Speaker 1: amusing planet article. Here's another hypothetical. In the number three
25:30
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five million, two hundred eighty seven thousand,
25:32
Speaker 1: one forty nine, I place a decimal point after the
25:36
Speaker 1: eight how many are there now in the hundreds place,
25:40
Speaker 1: to which Hans would would tap five times and just
25:42
Speaker 1: to peep behind the curtain, you guys, I could not
25:45
Speaker 1: even decipher what this number was without the decimals um
25:50
Speaker 1: and the the commas. I had to resay it several times.
25:53
Speaker 1: Had finally been very generously came to my aid. So
25:57
Speaker 1: again I would have been blown away by this horse. Dude,
25:59
Speaker 1: maybe you should get a horse. Maybe you should reverse that.
26:02
Speaker 1: You're you're you're not super bullish on on pets, but Hamster,
26:08
Speaker 1: you can teach my hamster. Have you teach my hamster
26:10
Speaker 1: to do math? And instead of clos that could just
26:13
Speaker 1: be like scratches, cage cage taps. Yeah, I think that's great.
26:17
Speaker 1: Or like have the hamster you know, maybe throw food
26:20
Speaker 1: pellets or count with food. Well, that's tough because they'll
26:23
Speaker 1: eat them. Probably all should you shouldn't do it with
26:25
Speaker 1: juvenile hamsters now, But sure, I definitely need a math
26:28
Speaker 1: hamster because you know, not like my phone has a
26:31
Speaker 1: calculator on it or anything. I want a math raven
26:34
Speaker 1: or a math octopus. I would also accept a math tiger.
26:38
Speaker 1: But well we'll see why it is second. So like
26:41
Speaker 1: you said, I want to I want to harp on
26:43
Speaker 1: this for a second. Clever Hans then was not just
26:47
Speaker 1: uh gifted in the realm of mathematics or arithmetic. He
26:51
Speaker 1: also wowed crowds by spelling out words and names of people.
26:57
Speaker 1: And this must have taken forever. Talk about tent so
27:00
Speaker 1: that each tap would be a letter of the alphabet.
27:05
Speaker 1: So one tap, that's a two taps that's be imagine
27:11
Speaker 1: if someone's name is like uh Zachariah, that's gonna take
27:16
Speaker 1: forever to spell. And he also appeared to have a
27:20
Speaker 1: great memory. You could ask him something like, clever Hans,
27:25
Speaker 1: if the eighth day of a month comes on Tuesday,
27:28
Speaker 1: what is the date for the following Friday, and boom,
27:32
Speaker 1: boom boom, he would tap it out. He would tap
27:34
Speaker 1: that out for you. The weird thing is he also
27:38
Speaker 1: seemed to have all these other abilities as long as
27:42
Speaker 1: van Osten was with him, spoiler. He could recognize tones.
27:47
Speaker 1: He could recognize people in photographs, which is very unusual
27:51
Speaker 1: for a non human animal to do. He could tell
27:53
Speaker 1: you what time and day it was. He could tell
27:56
Speaker 1: the difference between straw and felt hats, which was maybe
27:59
Speaker 1: a bigger deal back then. I don't know. And of
28:01
Speaker 1: course we said he knew different um common colors. This
28:06
Speaker 1: led some people to say, you know, clever Hans might
28:09
Speaker 1: be as intelligent as a thirteen or fourteen year old child.
28:14
Speaker 1: That's certainly a shade further than Von Austin was even
28:18
Speaker 1: willing to go, because he initially thought that animals had
28:21
Speaker 1: the same propensity for logic and reasoning and math as
28:24
Speaker 1: a small child. So we've graduated from small child to
28:28
Speaker 1: like tween at least with his crowning horse achievement. Uh,
28:31
Speaker 1: Clever Hans. Pretty impressive stuff. Oh, hold the hold the horse,
28:39
Speaker 1: Hold your horses. That's the expression. We're having, that kind
28:43
Speaker 1: of you know moment where we're struggling because we want
28:46
Speaker 1: to keep going, but we also, like, you know, this
28:48
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a thirty minute is show, and
28:50
Speaker 1: this episode is very clearly going to go over an hour,
28:52
Speaker 1: so hopefully you don't mind. I think we're gonna cut
28:54
Speaker 1: it into two. Yeah. I think I'm just gonna start,
28:57
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna start doing for for everybody
29:01
Speaker 1: and us especially, I'm just gonna start saying that we're
29:04
Speaker 1: doing a two part series whenever we do an episode,
29:07
Speaker 1: and then we could just cut that line out if
29:09
Speaker 1: we if we get back to a one partner. But
29:11
Speaker 1: you're right, all the story of Clever Hans needs the
29:15
Speaker 1: full treatment. We have to go with the whole shebang.
29:18
Speaker 1: We have to give him the whole stable here. We
29:20
Speaker 1: didn't we we we didn't even talk about later studies.
29:23
Speaker 1: In cognition, there's a parrot we want you to meet, yes,
29:26
Speaker 1: and not to mention. Uh. This story has got a
29:28
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating twist round about the end, so stick around
29:33
Speaker 1: for that. In the meantime, gosh huge thanks to Gabe Luzier,
29:37
Speaker 1: researcher extraordinary hipped us to this topic and many others
29:40
Speaker 1: that you enjoy here on this show. Um, he's a
29:42
Speaker 1: real mention. I'd love to have him back to talk
29:44
Speaker 1: about something other than anthropomorphized cats. But that was a
29:48
Speaker 1: fabulous two partner as well. I think it's about time,
29:50
Speaker 1: don't you think, Ben? Yeah, fully agreed well with thanking people,
29:54
Speaker 1: I'd like to give out one of the coveted Ridiculous
29:57
Speaker 1: History thank you Awards uh to our good friends super
30:01
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram Casey. I'm going to replace our usual
30:06
Speaker 1: verbal award with an actual award. So this may look
30:10
Speaker 1: like an unopened jar of vegemite, but I want you
30:13
Speaker 1: to know this is gonna be the official thank you
30:16
Speaker 1: Award for Ridiculous History. Uh. Don't fantastic, don't get too excited.
30:23
Speaker 1: Uh awesome, it's in the mail. Uh. And also thanks,
30:27
Speaker 1: of course, thanks of course to our our own clever
30:31
Speaker 1: Hans Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. He's always trying
30:35
Speaker 1: to stay a half ahead of us, but we're gonna
30:37
Speaker 1: have him on some more episodes coming up sometime very soon.
30:40
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
30:50
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
30:52
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.