Numerical Cognition in Honeybees Enables Addition and Subtraction

Overview

Journal Sci Adv

Specialties Biology
Science

Date 2019 Feb 19

PMID 30775440

Citations 37

Authors

Scarlett R Howard

Aurore Avargues-Weber

Jair E Garcia

Andrew D Greentree

Adrian G Dyer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Many animals understand numbers at a basic level for use in essential tasks such as foraging, shoaling, and resource management. However, complex arithmetic operations, such as addition and subtraction, using symbols and/or labeling have only been demonstrated in a limited number of nonhuman vertebrates. We show that honeybees, with a miniature brain, can learn to use blue and yellow as symbolic representations for addition or subtraction. In a free-flying environment, individual bees used this information to solve unfamiliar problems involving adding or subtracting one element from a group of elements. This display of numerosity requires bees to acquire long-term rules and use short-term working memory. Given that honeybees and humans are separated by over 400 million years of evolution, our findings suggest that advanced numerical cognition may be more accessible to nonhuman animals than previously suspected.

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