It may come as a surprise that humans are not the only species that have the ability to count; in fact frogs, spiders, and fish are just a few examples of animals that are capable of distinguishing between various amounts. This ability to count is actually fairly common, but a new study, published in Science, unveils that bees possess the extraordinarily rare competence of addition and subtraction (using colors as a substitute for plus and minus signs)- which is thus far only known to be understood by chimpanzees, African grey parrots, and well, of course, humans. Aside from ‘getting’ how to add and subtract, it has been proven that bees also understand the concept of zero as well.
Scientists trained 14 bees to associate the colors blue and yellow with addition and subtraction. The bees were then placed at the entrance of a Y-shaped maze and presented different shapes that were either blue or yellow. If the shapes were blue, the bees were rewarded if they went to the end of the maze with one more blue shape; if the shapes were yellow the bees were rewarded if they went to the end of the maze with one less yellow shape. Therefore, the test showed that bees could add one shape if they saw blue or subtract one shape when they saw yellow. The success rate of the bees was approximately 63% to 72%, which is statistically much higher than the accuracy rate from random guessing. It is now known that bees have the capability of counting up to four. Scientists believe that these skills are used by bees for keeping track of environmental landmarks.
Another study, also published in Science, announced that scientists have also been able to demonstrate how bees understand the concept of zero by training 10 bees to first be able to recognize the smaller of two numbers; when shown two pictures of black or white shapes, the bees were treated with a sugar water if they flew towards the smaller number of shapes and punished with a bitter tasting chemical if they flew towards the larger quantity of shapes. Once the bees were consistently acing this test, the scientists administered another test, this time containing a new option of a solid white background containing no shapes at all. Although the bees had never seen this image before, they chose this option over pictures containing either 2 or 3 shapes 64% of the time, which implies they understood zero was less than 2 and 3. Scientists think this ability is used by bees for keeping track of food sources and predators.
This accomplishment is anything but a minimal feat for the bees; with a brain 20,000 times smaller than humans, the discovery that these tiny creatures can perform basic arithmetic can actually lead to new innovations in the field of artificial intelligence and the way machines learn. This new information also leads scientist to believe that these skills may be more common in the animal kingdom than we are aware of.