SALT LAKE CITY — According to the BBC, chickens, chimps, ants and black bears can all count. Now we can add bees to the list — kind of.
Gizmodo reports that a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that honeybees can link symbols to numbers. The discovery provides further evidence that humans aren’t the only species on Earth who have some form of numerical ability.
“This study is yet another demonstration that other creatures, without language and perhaps without symbols, also have a numerical ability, though of course, not to the same level or extent,” said Brian Butterworth, a professor at the University of College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
To test whether or not bees have any sort of number ability, groups of bees were trained to match specific symbols and numbers. Then they were shown a symbol in a maze that they needed to associate with the correct number in order to receive a reward.
“If a bee saw the symbol for the number three outside of the maze, the bee needed to locate the room designated by a sign containing three objects, such as three stars. After around 50 trials, the bees from both groups were achieving success rates between 80 and 90 percent,” Gizmodo’s article says.
According to the abstract, scientists found that honeybees could learn how to associate a sign and quantity — like matching a number with colors, shapes and symbols. However, the insects were stumped when tasked with reversing the task. So don’t expect local honeybees to figure out algebra anytime soon.
While the study couldn’t find any evidence of bees being capable of anything resembling math, the conclusion was still made that an insect brain still has “the basic requirement for numerical symbolic representation.”
This isn’t the first study involving bees and number ability — a study published last year in Science found that honeybees, like children, are able to comprehend the concept and symbolism of zero.