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The Ultimate Body Language Book

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people’s natural desires to please others, and in this respect, willing participants are fairly generous.<br />

In the late 1800’s a German based high school teacher Von Osten was studying phrenology which is a<br />

now discredited theory that intelligence, character and personality traits are based on the shapes and<br />

bumps on someone’s head. Van Osten was also interested in the study of animal intelligence and<br />

believed that people had underestimated the reasoning skills of animals. That’s when he began tutoring<br />

a cat, horse and a bear in the ways of mathematics. Predictably, the cat was aloof to his teachings and<br />

the bear was downright hostile, but the stallion named Hans showed promise. With more focused<br />

lessons, Hans was able to learn to use his hoof to tap out numbers written on a blackboard. With<br />

practice, Hans was reliably able to perform this ‘feet’ for any number under ten.<br />

“Unconscious cuing” has been reported in more than just a horse. ‘<strong>The</strong> Curious Case of Clever Hans’<br />

has lead psychologists and animal communication experts to look for the phenomenon in dogs who<br />

follow their owners’ facial expressions. Photo credit: Public Domain.<br />

Von Osten steeped things up a notch by drawing out basic arithmetic problems such as square roots,<br />

and fractions. To Van Osten’s delight, Hans was able to keep up with the new teachings and proved to<br />

be a very clever horse which helped to maintain Von Osten’s original assertions about animal<br />

intelligence. Happy with his progress, Von Osten began to tour Germany with Hans so that others could<br />

enjoy his talents.<br />

Han’s could answer simple questions such as “What is the square root of sixteen?” by following up<br />

with four taps, “What is the sum of two and three?” with five taps coming from Hans. Hans was also<br />

capable of spelling out words with each tap representing a letter of the alphabet in sequence. Thus, an<br />

“a” would be one tape and a “b” would be two taps. While Hans wasn’t always one hundred percent<br />

accurate he was on par with an average highschooler’s scores, which impressed his crowds.<br />

Naturally, skeptics grew larger and larger. Germany’s board of education then requested an<br />

investigation into Hans’ abilities. Von Osten agreed as he had nothing to hide and knew there was no

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