How Would a Duck Count

We all know how we count from 1-10 on our fingers but how would a duck make a number system.

Ducks have 3 main fingers on each foot. So they might start with 1 and instead of their last toe being 6, like we might use, it would be their ten. So they would count 1 2 3 4 5 10, 11 12 13 14 15 20, and so on. What we call eight they would call 12. We call this base 6, because they use only 6 numbers as the basis of their number system.

A horse with only 2 hoofs would count 1 10, 2 20, 3 30 and so on. We call this base 2 also known as binary. Counters use base two as their native language as they are made up of switches that can only be on or off. Computers count like this. 0 1, 10 11, 100 101 110 111, and so on.

Schoolhouse Rock's Little Twelve Toes does the same thing with base 12.

Computers also use base16 a lot, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F, 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1, 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F, and so on.

The ancient Mesopotamians in Babylon used a base 60. In our terms they go through all our numbers, and our entire alphabet almost twice before getting to use 0 to create their equivalent to 10.