Bees can learn the symbols associated with counting, a new experiment suggests

A new experiment in which bees have been trained to associate symbols with figures suggests that we can communicate with insects in unthinkable ways.

A Franco-Australian collaboration claims to have taught honeybees to associate specific traits with quantities. The new study, published in the Royal Society B report, suggests that bees are able to link symbols to numbers, a cognitive ability that, as this research suggests, was able to emerge relatively early in the history of human history. evolution of our planet.

"It is often thought that mathematics is a human ability, and perhaps very recent, that relies on the invention of counting words and digital symbols," Gizmodo's Brian Butterworth, a professor at the University of California, said. Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience of the University of London. in an email. "However, this study is further evidence that other creatures, without language and perhaps without symbols, also have a numerical ability, although not at the same level or extent," said Butterworth, who did not participate in the new research. .

If it sounds familiar, you are probably thinking of similar work being done by this same team, apparently obsessed with bees. These scientists from the RMIT University, the University of Toulouse and other institutions have conducted similar experiments, showing clearly that bees can do elementary calculations and understand the concept of zero, although at least one expert to whom we spoke is not convinced, saying that the bees may have been provoked by other clues, among other complaints. Be that as it may, these experiments have shown that much more is happening in the brain of these bees than is commonly believed.

For the new study, researchers offer new evidence that bees can associate symbols with a digital count. This has never been shown before, and in fact this study, as far as we know, marks the first time humans have been communicating with insects using symbolic language.

Scientists have already shown that animals like chimpanzees, monkeys, pigeons and parrots can learn to use symbols to represent numbers. This ability, however, has not been demonstrated in insects. That said, and as Karl von Frisch, a Nobel laureate scientist, has shown, bees are able to communicate with members of their own species through a language close to dance.

The new study did not know if interspecific communication was possible between humans and insects – a legitimate question to ask, since bees have less than a million neurons in their brains, compared to the 86 billion neurons present in the human head. . Indeed, an unresolved scientific question is that of the size of a brain to support communication via language.

"Mathematics is considered a universal language by humans and we wanted to know if bees could understand the basic elements of this language that we developed," said Adrian Dyer, associate professor at RMIT University, co -author of the new study. in an email to Gizmodo. "Our previous research on bees has focused on how they can treat relationships, like the concept of zero, but this new work explores how bees can use symbolic representations for numbers."

The experimental setup used in the study was actually quite simple.

A group of bees was formed to match a symbol to a specific number of elements, while a second group was formed to do the opposite, matching a specific number of elements. elements to a symbol. During the tests, the bees were presented with the symbol or the number of elements before entering a Y-shaped labyrinth. Once inside the "decision room" , two new signs were presented to the bees, each leading to a new room. The insects had to choose the sign, and therefore the room, associated with the outdoor signage. The right choice – matching the symbol to the number of items or vice versa – allowed the bees to enter a room with a sweet reward.

For example, if a bee saw the number three symbol on the outside of the labyrinth, she would have to locate the room designated by a panel containing three objects, such as three stars. After about 50 trials, bees in both groups achieved success rates of between 80 and 90%.

"Bees in both groups demonstrated significant learning during … attempts to associate signs with numerals or numbers with signs, demonstrating that bees learned that the two signs had corresponding corresponding quantities associated with them" wrote the authors in the new study.

That said, bees really struggled to transfer their new skills to the opposite of what they had learned. That is, character-to-number or character-to-character, but not both. In these scenarios, the bees essentially cast a coin, making it well about half the time.

"This suggests that number processing and symbol understanding occur in different regions of the bee brain, in the same way as the separate treatment of the human brain," said Scarlett Howard, lead author of the paper and researcher at the 39, University of Toulouse. in a report. "Our results show that honeybees are not at the same level as animals that have been able to learn symbols as numbers and perform complex tasks."

That said, Howard said the results "have implications for what we know about learning, how to reverse tasks, and how the brain creates connections and associations between concepts."

Dyer said the study demonstrates that relatively small brains can learn symbolic representations.

"This suggests that the building blocks of the incredibly complex language we have as humans could have started long ago and that our brains have gained more capacity as we evolve," he said. he declared to Gizmodo. "This corresponds to a very Darwinian framework of how complex behaviors can evolve."

In terms of limitations, Dyer said the bees had only been tested on two room choices. The bees may have done more, he said, "but it was important to communicate this breakthrough in our understanding to hopefully allow more researchers to begin exploring the treatment of with bees. " To what, he added: "The research potentially opens the door for new methods of communication with many animals, and perhaps a new one was to think about communicating with AI."

For Butterworth, Dyer's suggestion that humans could communicate with insects using symbolic language is a bit exaggerated.

"This seems to me a very optimistic statement: individual symbols may have references, but the language requires the combination of symbols, a grammar, and this has not been demonstrated," Butterworth told Gizmodo. "At most, this shows that bees can learn or have an innate neural representation of at least two abstract quantities – the double and the empty – and can link these representations to arbitrary symbols."

Despite radically different brains, he said, humans and bees must share "a very simple mechanism that can be implemented in very few brain cells." Unfortunately, the "authors of this study did not take the next step and proposed a mechanism might look like," Butterworth told Gizmodo.

There is no doubt that there is still much to be done in this area, but this research track is certainly fascinating. Obviously, tiny bee brains have a powerful punch. The more we learn about the brain of insects, the more we will learn about how we acquired ours.