Bees can link symbols to numbers and study the results

We learned that bees can understand zero and do basic calculations, and a new study now shows that their tiny insect brain is able to connect symbols to numbers.

The researchers trained bees to match a character to a specific amount, revealing that they are able to learn that a symbol represents a numerical amount.

This discovery sheds new light on how digital capabilities have evolved over millennia and even opens up new possibilities for communication between humans and other species.

The discovery, made by the same Franco-Australian team who discovered that bees understood the concept of zero and can perform simple calculations, also points to new approaches to bio-inspired computer science that can replicate the same thing. highly effective treatment approach of the brain.

The study conducted by RMIT University is published in the Acts of the Royal Society B.

According to Associate Professor Adrian Dyer, while humans were the only species to have developed systems to represent numbers, like the Arabic numerals we use every day, research shows that the concept can be grasped by many brains smaller than ours.

"We take this for granted once we have learned our numbers as children, but being able to recognize what" 4 "really requires is a sophisticated level of cognitive abilities," said Dyer.

"Studies have shown that primates and birds can also learn to associate symbols with numbers, but this is the first time we see this in insects.

"Humans have over 86 billion neurons in our brains, bees have fewer than one million and we are separated by more than 600 million years of evolution.

"But if bees have the ability to learn something as complex as a human-created symbolic language, it opens exciting new paths for future communication between species. "

Mini brains, maximum potential: what bees learned

Studies have shown that a number of nonhuman animals have learned that symbols can represent numbers, including pigeons, parrots, chimpanzees, and monkeys.

Some of their exploits were impressive – the chimpanzees learned Arabic numerals and were able to order them properly, while an African gray parrot named Alex was able to learn the names of the numbers and sum up the quantities.

The new study shows for the first time that this complex cognitive capacity is not limited to vertebrates.

The experiment on bees was conducted by Dr. Scarlett Howard, a former Ph.D. researcher at the RMIT Bio Inspired Digital Detection Laboratory (BIDS-Lab) and currently a member of the Center for Research on Animal Cognition at Toulouse III University – Paul Sabatier, CNRS.

In a Y-shaped labyrinth, bees have been trained to match a character to several elements.

They were then tested to find out if they could apply their new knowledge to match the character to different items of the same amount (in the same way that "2" can represent two bananas, two trees or two hats).

A second group was formed at the opposite approach, associating a number of elements to a character.

While both could understand their specific training, the different groups were unable to reverse the association and determine what to do when tested with the opposite (character with number or number with character).

"This suggests that number processing and symbol understanding occur in different regions of the bee brain, in the same way as separate treatment in the human brain," Howard said.

"Our results show that honey bees are not at the same level as animals that have been able to learn symbols as numbers and perform complex tasks.

"But the results have implications for what we know about learning, inverting tasks and how the brain creates connections and associations between concepts.

"Discovering how miniature brains can capture these complex digital skills will help us understand how mathematical and cultural thinking has evolved in humans and, possibly, in other animals."

The study of insect bugs offers fascinating possibilities for the future design of highly efficient computer systems, said Dyer.

"When we look for solutions to complex problems, we often find that nature has already done the job in a much more elegant and effective way," he said.

"Understanding how small information is managed by the bee brain paves the way for bio-inspired solutions using a fraction of the power of conventional treatment systems."

The article, "Symbolic representation of numberality by honeybees (Apis mellifera): pairing of characters with small quantities", with co-authors Aurore Avarguès-Weber (University of Toulouse), Jair Garcia (School of Communication and Media, RMIT) and Professor Andrew Greentree (ARC Center of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics, RMIT), is published in Acts of the Royal Society B.