RE:
 >Nicholas Theocarakis
 >
 >The Australopithecus who had a fruit too many and said in these
 >pre-linguistic times "Man (not sapiens)! I am such a beast!" may be the
 >first precursor of the theory.
 >


It seems indeed that  some animals  and some "uneducated" tribal people are
able to translate the Weber-Fechner Law of diminishing sensations
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law)
into numbers. See, e.g:

ScienceDaily (May 30, 2008):
"It appears that we, as humans, can access two different methods of
numerical mapping," says Dehaene. "The logarithmic, ratio-based method is
the most intuitive; we inherit it from our primate evolution and we still
access it in the absence of precise mathematical tools. Through education,
we also acquire a linear mapping. However, this does appear to be a cultural
construct.".....
Very young children have also been shown to access a logarithmic scale for
number mapping, and animals compare numbers in accord with their ratios
rather than their interval relationships."
Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080529141344.htm

Michael Ambrosi