[hawkjo]

This is of the same flavor as wondering if said species would invent money, a collective fiction of usefulness so obvious it has been created many times. Or perhaps it’s closer to wondering if they would develop futures on a stock market.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Dinosaurs didn't have numbers as they hadn't been invented yet. Merely being surround by quantities of stuff doesn't make human abstractions spring into existence.

The natural world doesn't perform arithmetic beyond summation and subtraction or symbolic manipulation of anything. We may use invented symbols to model abstract concepts aspects of the natural world but that doesn't make such things exist outside of collective human knowledge.