WIKIMEDIA, SHARP PHOTOGRAPHYHoneybees can identify a piece of paper with zero dots as “less than” a paper with a few dots. Such a feat puts the insects in a select group—including the African grey parrot, nonhuman primates, and preschool children—that can understand the concept of zero, researchers report June 7 in Science.
“The fact that the bees generalized the rule ‘choose less’ to [blank paper] was consequently really surprising,” study coauthor Aurore Avarguès-Weber, a cognitive neuroscientist the University of Toulouse, tells The Scientist in an email. “It demonstrated that bees consider ‘nothing’ as a quantity below any number.”
In past studies, researchers have shown that bees can count up to five, but whether the insects could grasp more-complex ideas, such as addition or nothingness, has been unclear. In the latest study, Avarguès-Weber and her colleagues tested the bees’ ability to comprehend the absence of a stimulus by first training the insects to consistently choose sheets of paper either with fewer or more dots by landing on a tiny platform near the paper with the dots. If the ...
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