Bees Can Solve Math Problems With Addition and Subtraction 72
According to a new study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from Australia and France have shown that bees can perform simple arithmetic, adding and subtracting small numbers by studying color-coded shapes. CNET reports: To test the buzzers' ability to perform arithmetic, the team used a three-chambered maze shaped like a Y, training bees to enter through a hole into a small chamber where they would see their first stimulus: blue or yellow shapes on a plain, grey background. The number of shapes varied between 1 and 5 and the color of the shapes told the bee whether it needed to add one (blue) or subtract one (yellow) from the initial number. The bee then flew into a subsequent chamber which presented both a correct option and an incorrect option. To train the bees, the correct option rewarded the critters with a drop of tasty sugar solution -- a delightful dessert for the bee. On the other hand, selecting the incorrect solution resulted in a nasty drop of quinine -- like a slab of Brussels sprouts slathered in chocolate.
The testing procedure itself focused on 14 bees undergoing four tests of 10 choices. The tests themselves were "non-reinforced," so they didn't receive reward or punishment when selecting their "answers" during testing. Because the bees were subjected to two answers each time, the expectation is that -- purely by chance -- they would select the correct answer 50 percent of the time. But the bees performed significantly better than chance would predict, selecting the correct answer around 65 percent of the time.
The testing procedure itself focused on 14 bees undergoing four tests of 10 choices. The tests themselves were "non-reinforced," so they didn't receive reward or punishment when selecting their "answers" during testing. Because the bees were subjected to two answers each time, the expectation is that -- purely by chance -- they would select the correct answer 50 percent of the time. But the bees performed significantly better than chance would predict, selecting the correct answer around 65 percent of the time.
New way for students to cheat on math exams . . . (Score:2)
. . . Bee Bearding:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And here all along I thought they were just trying to be cute or relive some of the stress of the exams with their "comfort" pets.
Re:Did they try this with people? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. How do we know there's no pheromones at play after multiple runs through the puzzle? Or some ability to smell the sugar. Or any of a number of confounding factors.
Re: (Score:3)
Addition and subtraction is often rather instinctual. What makes it difficult, is when we symbolize the numbers in an abstract base, and use symbolic representations of addition and subtraction.
so
1 = *
2 = **
So if we say put * and ** together we get *** no problem. However saying 1 + 2 = 3 requires higher brain power. Because the symbolic numbers is more abstract and doesn't always mean the same thing.
so
1 = A^
2 = #$
So if we put A and #$ together we get possible combinations of A#$, #A$, #$A, A$#, $A#, $#A b
Re: (Score:3)
For whatever reason, mathematics is universal, built-in to everything within the universe. Each species has it's own method of going about life. It's literally
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am so stealing (and modifying) your example for my philosophy of science classes.
It is one thing to say that bees interact with the world mathematically, and another to say that they understand math.
I don't see how science can make the jump from the former to the latter in a way warranted by measurement.
Re: (Score:2)
What one may understand as (what we call) mathematics, another may understand as color. Take the example of butterfly wings. The color from their wing
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That's the exact definition of Pavlovian conditioning. You don't need the reward / punishment in the actual test, that's the exact point of it.
Also 14 is not nearly a large enough sample size to determine whether that slight deviation from a perfect 50:50 result is not by chance.
So this is not even a good enough experiment to determine whether pavlovian conditioning works on bees.
Laughably small test sample numbers! Insects and spiders have shown that they DO possess more intelligence than we give them credit for. (I've seen studies suggesting cockroaches could have similar intelligence to rodents); but this test is just statistical noise. You don't get any confirmable answer with these numbers.
However... put that aside... imagine they did 14,000 tests and got the same result %; does that show that insects can do maths? Probably not, there could have been some other form of patt
Re: (Score:3)
I also expect the inverse too. We humans are not as smart as we think we are also.
A lot of our actions and responses is more instinctive then intellectual. Political/Religious/Sports Teams/Text Editors/Cell Phones leaning is less about an intellectual response to the policies,rules and teachings. But the instinctive need to be part of group, and be protective of such group.
An Evangelical and an Atheist (Both English Speaking Americans) will normally be diametrically opposed to each other. However we take
This isn't Pavlovian conditioning. (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you're talking about the "scientists" who've breezed through all those years of school and training without ever picking up on the basics of statistics and probability.
On account of just repeating the correct answers they memorized earlier.
Basically, you could "train" a group of 14 coins to do the same task.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Although, to be fair, they did fuck up on the Pavlovian conditioning as well.
In half of the experiments, "correct answer" was always going straight from the point
No way this is significant (Score:1)
14 bees undergoing four tests of 10 choices getting 65% right? Are you kidding me?
math not needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Memorization of the correct and incorrect answers is all that is needed for the described (too small of a sample size to be considered an) "experiment".
How far /. has fallen...
Re:math not needed (Score:5, Informative)
Memorization of the correct and incorrect answers is all that is needed for the described (too small of a sample size to be considered an) "experiment".
How far /. has fallen...
It is true that memorisation could explain this. You point about the sample size is trickier, though. Firstly there is no magic number that constitutes a large (vs small) sample size. What is suitable depends on the size of the effect, the variance, and the degree to which you want to generalise the results to a wider population. This is often balanced against what is possible. In biology a lot of experiments have a small sample size because of the cost or difficulty in gathering the data. For instance, I just reviewed a paper where the authors have gathered data from just a single subject. However, they gather a vast amount and do a very thorough job. Their work still stands as it is (it's in a sense a methods paper) and given that they aren't targetting a big name journal or over-selling their results I'm going to let the n=1 slide.
In the particular case of this paper, what I find most annoying isn't the n=14 but that their graphs hide the underlying data by displaying them as just bars with a 95% confidence interval for the mean. I would also agree, however, that I don't see why in this case they couldn't have produced a larger sample size. That's not the main issue, IMHO, however.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't like they are studying the remaining living WWII veterans or Japanese anorexics. They should be able to find some extra BEES to run the tests on. Presumably they have access to a hive, at a minimum.
Re:math not needed (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't like they are studying the remaining living WWII veterans or Japanese anorexics. They should be able to find some extra BEES to run the tests on. Presumably they have access to a hive, at a minimum.
I agree a larger n would be nice (say, n=30 at least) and I *think* it's likely not too hard to obtain in this case. I would caution, however, that sometimes it's a lot harder than it looks to obtain these data. It could be that n=14 is hard to do.
I used to work in insect neuroscience and I collaborated with people who did experiments of the general sort described in the paper. The issue was of course not finding insects -- we had lots of insects -- the problem we had was that running the experiments was very time consuming and could often fail for unclear reasons. You may get drift in behavioral scores over time, batches of insects that produce suspect results, etc. All sorts of really weird stuff happens with animal behavior and so to get solid results you believe in might require throwing out most of your data (e.g. because variance was weirdly high on some days). After all is said and done your sample size isn't always what you hope for. I've seen really good people work for years and still end up with sample size of less than 10 animals.
Re: (Score:2)
You may get drift in behavioral scores over time, batches of insects that produce suspect results, etc.
Yes, that's exactly the problem here. These guys got a batch of bees that happened to score 65% and cherry picked that as proof that the bees can do arithmetic.
If they did that, it's gross data manipulation. You don't know that they did that and there is no evidence that they did.
Re: (Score:1)
As I read it, they trained the bees by displaying 1, 2, or 4 blue shapes and rewarded the selection of a feeder with 2, 3, or 5 respectively (the "addition" test). They also trained the bees by displaying 2, 4, or 5 yellow shapes and rewarded selection of 1, 3, or 4 respectively ("subtraction").
It seems to me the training was "see blue, select the feeder with more blue; see yellow, select feeder with less yellow".
Re: (Score:3)
I agree that the small sample size is no proof of any malign intent, however, the tiny sample size with no explanation of why the sample size is so small, the use of graphics instead of presenting the raw data and the fact that they never appear to have considered memory being sufficient to explain the results without any claims that "bees can add/subtract" are all worrying signs that the study is worthless.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that the small sample size is no proof of any malign intent, however, the tiny sample size with no explanation of why the sample size is so small, the use of graphics instead of presenting the raw data and the fact that they never appear to have considered memory being sufficient to explain the results without any claims that "bees can add/subtract" are all worrying signs that the study is worthless.
Based on what I see in the field in general, I wouldn't say n=14 is "tiny". I would say it's "OK could be better" but of course that depends on SD and effect size too. As for the lack of raw data points, that's inexcusable (i.e. there is no reason not to do it) but unfortunately very common indeed in this field. I've found from experience that you can't write off a paper just because they miss out the raw data points: you'd throw out 90% of the field and it wouldn't make sense. FWIW, authors are obliged to
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that the small sample size is no proof of any malign intent, however, the tiny sample size with no explanation of why the sample size is so small, the use of graphics instead of presenting the raw data
On reflection, I take back the raw data statement (which was made WRT to lack of data points overlaid onto error bars -- a common thing in the field). There ought to be more detailed analyses of what individual bees do.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the problem is not sample size.
The problem with this study design is that they never exposed the bees to a number/combination they had never seen before, to see whether the inductive gaps were filled in, or 404 in the memory table.
And there are other possible controls for memory effects, such as whether this numerically consistent pattern is easy to learn than purely random patterns.
Re: (Score:2)
Not even that (as I've said in another post). Bees have been around for literally millions of years; it would be amazing if they still weren't any good at picking up clues on which plants deliver the goods. Want to bet that a bee's visual cortex can't classify the difference between a "busy" pattern of lots of patches and a "simpler" pattern? All it has to learn is to associate busier patterns with the reward for one colour of "flower", and simpler ones for the other. Job done, no counting required.
Indeed, this is my first thought too. Not that I think it is out of the realm of possibility that bees can count; but it is probably much more likely there is some sort of pattern matching is going on, as you suggest. Bees need to be able to recognise visual patterns to find flowers; you'd expect them to be good at that. It's a much more feasible explanation than that they can count and do simple maths.
The wall has been hit (Score:2)
Alternately... (Score:1)
...bees learned that bigger bunches of blue flowers are better, and smaller bunches of yellow ones. That doesn't need maths per se; just a rough visual classification.
Impressive (Score:2)
So can a calculator (Score:2)
A Half adder consists of TWO logic gates, a full adder can be 5.
Bees have approximately one million neurons. Fuck's sake, we should be able to run far more complex computations on it.
Re:So can a calculator (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a Beewulf.... I'll just see myself out now.
If you think this is wild... (Score:1)
If you think this is wild wait until you find out about the bee's Waggle Dance. That's a real mind blower as far as intellect, hive mentality and communications.
Re: (Score:2)
Low scoring (Score:2)
I think I'm being generous if I score this study B+
Bees can either subtract or smell (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah. Should have seen the results of putting the sugar and quinine in opposite spots on the last test just to control for this. If they follow the cues, thru did math. If they follow the smells, then this study is worthless.
Imagine a Beeowulf Cluster of these! (Score:3)
Damn, I gotta get some bees!
THAT is why (Score:2)
we had to kill all of them. We can't have insects that are smarter than people buzzing around.
Use this in some way to fight Monsanto? (Score:1)
Yes those Monsanto bastards use those Bees to cheat at agriculture and dominate the neighboring farmers so maybe this could be used to strategically tip the scales maybe? Come to think about it, Monsanto could do the same. Uh oh..... now bees could get caught in the middle of an industrial war. Crap....
It's not colony collapse disorder (Score:1)
Don't care (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In my Osh Kosh BeeGosh pocket of course, my dungarbees. Right next to my pistil.
Bee Gees, before coffee (Score:2)
I misread it as "Bee Gees", and a tune started playing in my head: "Ah, Ah, Ah, counting to five, counting to five..."
65% is hardly definitive (Score:2)
and they can do basic algebra! (Score:2)
2b + 3b = 5b
Sample size too small (Score:2)
Math bees? (Score:1)