Charles,

"Anthropologist of the Month" centerfold! I suspect with birds also that
those with life lists in the thousands really can't remember much if
anything about more than say 500 of the most familiar. The limit of 500
is not a limit on how many names one can memorize, but rather on how many
items one can recall in a particular domain of experience each of which
indexes an extensive network of related information, as the names of
familiar birds do.

Gene.

On Thu, 23 Jun 1994, Charles E. Vaughan wrote:

> Sorry about my earlier slip of the finger.
>
> Some may feel this is a waste of bandwidth, but I was intrigued to see the
> full page Seattle Times article on 6/21 about Eugene Hunn (our own SAS "Bird
> Brain"). There is no more than a short sentence or 2 about birds, but it is
> great to see some of the vocations of the local birding community. The
> article (for those who haven't seen it) discusses Dr. Hunn's work on the
> length of lists that can be remembered by a range of classifications and
> cultures. Can anyone remember more than 500 of something? I note the
> elaborate classifications schemes developed in fields like chemistry to
> generalize and thereby allow more items to be recalled in sub-classes.
>
> Charles Vaughan
> cev at rocket.com
>
>