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Honeybees Seem To Understand the Notion of Zero, Study Finds (sci-news.com)
A new study published in the journal Science finds honeybees are able to understand the concept of zero numerosity, joining the ranks of dolphins, parrots, and primates. Sci-News.com reports: The study authors set out to test the honeybee on its understanding, marking individual honeybees for easy identification and luring them to a specially-designed testing apparatus. The bees were trained to choose an image with the lowest number of elements in order to receive a reward of sugar solution. For example, the bees learned to choose three elements when presented with three vs. four; or two elements when presented with two vs. three. When the scientists periodically tested the bees with an image that contained no elements versus an image that had one or more, the bees understood that the set of zero was the lower number -- despite never having been exposed to an "empty set."
If they didn't understand the concept of zero or empty then they'd keep going back to flowers that had run out of nectar.
Understanding quantity is a useful survival trait, I don't understand why some scientists find it so amazing that animals understand the concept of "none".
Or they were trained to avoid the element itself. What's more likely, that an insect can "understand the concept of zero" or that it can combine two stimuli (I want to go towards this thing for the sugar, but I want to stay away from the element)?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Understanding zero is comprehending the number of bees that will remain if we continue to use pesticides.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Their communication system alone is amazing. Their mental mapping when flying between locations is based on the direction of the sun, but they automatically adjust for how the sun will move (even at night or when it's otherwise not visible), in a manner that adjusts for latitude and the passing of the seasons. In the hive, they waggle dance to indicate the direction and distance to a resource (the static charges they build up can be perceived by nearby bees when they waggle). Moving straight up means "in the direction of the sun" - not "the direction of the sun when I last set out", but the current direction of the sun. Every second spent on the waggle before looping back to the start represents a kilometer of distance. A waggle dance is usually enough to bring another bee to within a couple hundred meters of a target, wherein they start searching visually. Bees don't blindly listen to waggle dances; if they're having good luck on their own, they're unlikely to listen to it, only bees that have been having trouble finding resources tend to follow them. If a bee had a *bad* experience with the location being danced to - found no resources, found a dead bee, etc - there's a "NO" buzz frequency (380Hz) which they can do. The more impressed a bee is with their location, the more vigorously they waggle dance, while the more opposed a bee is to a location, the more it does its "NO" buzz; they can even end up getting into physical fights over the issue. Advocates of different locations can also get into fights with each other.
It's easy to think of individual bees as mindless drones as part of a "greater whole", but they really aren't; they're impressive even individually. In addition to solar navigation, they also have landmark navigation, visual navigation to small targets, and they learn what sort of things pay good rewards (which as this study shows, can involve significant reasoning). Contrary to the popular image, the queen doesn't "give direction"; she's not a "leader". She just "smells nice", and other bees want to be near her. But beyond that, each bee is an individual.
They're fastidiously clean. They not only will remove debris and any dead bees from a hive, but they're adamant about not defecating in the hive. Honeybees will literally hold it until they die if they can't leave (e.g. in the winter due to weather) rather than foul their own hive. And maintaining the hive is a constant struggle because there's an endless list of pests and predators that want to eat either the bees, their larva, or the honey; a hive is such a tempting resource.
Preserving the honey is of course quite the task, and bees have specific climate requirements in general. They do amazing job at managing the internal climate. Some bees will act like air conditioners, fanning with their wings to create airflow through certain areas. They'll add or remove propolis to the hive to adjust how "weathertight" it is, to get the right amount of airflow without letting in pests. In the winter, they cluster together for warmth in the "winter cluster", which slowly migrates across the comb, eating their honey stores as they go; their collective body heat keeps them from freezing, and they minimize their surface area by clustering together. Some (non-European) honeybees have taken this even further - made famous by The Oatmeal, Japanese honeybees fight off attacks from otherwise impervious Japanese giant hornets (aka real-life Tracker Jackers) by clustering around them and raising their body temperature to the point that they survive but the hornets effectively die of heat stroke.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
Considering that insects don't have the same kind of image processing or, indeed, even the same kind of eyes, I find this far more likely than they are counting elements. It is far more likely that a bee is being trained to go where there is less overall of whatever color it is the "element" is and gravitating that way. Or, and this now strikes me as being even more likely, they are going where there is more of the background. A human can look at an image and with our image processing, break it down into elements and count them. Our brains do this in the background and it might not even strike us that the image with fewer elements has more background because that's not how our brains work. It is how our brains work so strongly that it is also appearing as a bias in the way these results are being interpreted. But from a color, shade, or pixel perspective, it can be equally said that the image with fewer "elements" on it also has more background.
I must say I find it frustrating the article has no reference to what the images were of or what the "elements" were that the bees were supposedly counting.
Sure, they understand '0', but do they understand what happens when you put a '1' or a '2' in front of it?
I bet they don't.
Even in the case of zero the bee is still being shown a picture. In the bee's brain that might count as a "something" where this pure "something" is more attractive than that dirty "something" when it is collecting nectar. It might not be anything more than that.
We took the concept of "nothing" and made a TV show about it.
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they did 3 years of control studies to eliminate any other possibilities.. Its right there in the article you incurious pseudointellectual.