Researchers Have Found That bees Can Do Basic Mathematics

In a discovery that expands our understanding between brain size and brain power researchers have found that bees can do basic mathematics.

Honeybees can understand the concept of zero, Australian and French researchers have found and test whether bees could perform arithmetic operations like addition and subtraction.

The revelation that the miniature brain of a honeybee can grasp basic mathematical operations has implications for the future development of AI.

Researchers from RMIT University, showed bees can be taught to recognize colors for addition and subtraction and can use this information to solve arithmetic.

If maths does not require a massive brain, there might also be new ways to incorporate interactions of both long-term rules and working memory into designs to improve rapid AI learning.

Many species can understand the difference between quantities. But numerical cognition, number and arithmetic operations, requires sophisticated level of processing.

Previous studies shown some primates, birds, babies and even spiders can add and/or subtract and new research, published adds bees to that list.

PhD researcher Scarlett Howard in the Bio Inspired Digital Sensing-Lab (BIDS-Lab) at RMIT conducted experiment involved training individual honeybees to visit a Y-shaped maze.

Bees received a reward of sugar water when they made a correct choice and received a bitter-tasting quinine solution if choose incorrect.

Honeybees go back to a place if the location provides a good source of food, so they returned repeatedly to the experimental set-up to collect nutrition and continue learning.

When a bee flew to the entrance they would see a set of elements that were either blue, which meant they had to add, or yellow, which meant they had to subtract.

After viewing initial number, they would fly through a hole into a decision chamber where they choose to fly to the left or right side of the maze.

One side it had an incorrect solution to the problem and the other side the correct of either plus or minus one. The correct answer was changed randomly to avoid bees learning to visit just one side of the maze.

At the beginning of the experiment, they made random choices until they work out how to solve the problem. Over 100 learning trials that took 4 to 7 hours, they learned that blue meant +1, while yellow meant -1. They could then apply the rules to new numbers.

By: Aishwarya Sharma

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190206200358.htm