Animals & nature · 2018
Can honey bees trained to compare quantities recognize that none is less than some?
Yes. After training with displays containing one to six elements, honey bees applied a “less than” rule to place a display with no elements below displays with elements. This supports a limited understanding of zero as a quantity, not a claim that bees understand all the mathematics of zero.
Details
Researchers trained individual honey bees to choose according to either a “greater than” or a “less than” rule, using displays containing one to six elements. The central finding was that bees could extend the “less than” rule to a quantity outside that training range: no elements at all. They placed this empty quantity at the bottom of the numerical order.
This was an animal-learning experiment, not simply an observation of bees in nature. The result suggests that trained bees can treat an absence of elements as a quantity that can be ordered relative to positive quantities. The abstract compares this ability with findings in some vertebrates, including parrots, nonhuman primates and preschool children; it does not establish that their broader numerical abilities are the same. It also gives no sample size or accuracy figures, so the size and consistency of the effect cannot be assessed from the abstract alone.
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