One rabbit saw six elephants while going to the river.
Every elephant saw two monkeys going towards the river.
Every monkey holds one parrot in their hands.

How many “animals” are going towards the river ?

The answer to the simple maths riddle is:

5 Animals. 

Well done if you got it right.

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Why is the answer 5 ?

Let’s go through the question again and talk through the result.

1 rabbit saw 6 elephants while going to the river.  <– Therefore, one animal (the rabbit) is going towards the river.

Every elephant saw 2 monkeys going towards the river.  <– This is the tricky part, from the sentence it implies each of the 6 elephants saw 2 monkeys going towards the river, hence logically will be 6 x 2 = 12 animals (monkeys) going towards the river.

However, the statement does not explicitly say that “Every elephant saw 2 DIFFERENT monkeys…”, therefore implicit rules apply and infer that the 2 monkeys are the same.

So, the correct answer is that every elephant saw 2 monkeys, and by inference, the 2 monkeys are the same, hence there exists only 2 monkeys which are going towards the river. 

Finally, every monkey holds 1 parrot in their hands.  <– Therefore, 2 parrots are going towards the river.

So in total, 1 rabbit, 2 monkeys and 2 parrots (5 animals) are going towards the river.

Hope all of you have fun with this simple maths riddle.