Bees seem to be more clever than you thought—they can count, but up to four only, according to a new study.
Earlier studies suggested that counting abilities were exclusive to vertebrates. Now, an international team has found bees also possess rudimentary number awareness and are able to recognize numbers up to four.
In fact, according to researchers, the bees do not technically “count” but are able to notice and recall how many dots they see. “We never expected to find such abilities in insects. Our feeling now is that —so far as these very basic skills go—there is probably no boundary between insects, animals and us,” said lead researcher Dr Shaowu Zhang of Arc Centre of Excellence in Vision Science in Australia.
In their study, bees were flown into a maze through an entrance marked with either two or three dots. They had to remember this number when the maze forked into two paths, one marked with two dots, the other with three, in order to reach a sugar-water reward.
Careful control over the experimental environment showed the bees were not using colour, smell or other clues to find their way, The Daily Telegraph reported.
“We think the bees are using two memory systems. First is working memory, which they use to recall the number of dots that point to the reward. The second system is to use memory rules. We found this out by changing the pattern of the dots—but the bees still managed to locate the reward,” he said.
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