Bees Can Link Symbols To Numbers, Study Finds (phys.org) 51
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Researchers have trained honeybees to match a character to a specific quantity, revealing they are able to learn that a symbol represents a numerical amount. The discovery, from the same Australian-French team that found bees get the concept of zero and can do simple arithmetic, also points to new approaches for bio-inspired computing that can replicate the brain's highly efficient approach to processing. Associate Professor Adrian Dyer said while humans were the only species to have developed systems to represent numbers, like the Arabic numerals we use each day, the research shows the concept can be grasped by brains far smaller than ours.
In a Y-shaped maze, individual bees were trained to correctly match a character with a number of elements. They were then tested on whether they could apply their new knowledge to match the character to various elements of the same quantity (in the same way that '2' can represent two bananas, two trees or two hats). A second group was trained in the opposite approach, matching a number of elements with a character. While both could grasp their specific training, the different groups were unable to reverse the association and work out what to do when tested with the opposite (character-to-number or number-to-character). As for what this means, Dr. Scarlett Howard, the researcher who conducted the experiment, said: "This suggests that number processing and understanding of symbols happens in different regions in bee brains, similar to the way separate processing happens in the human brain. Our results show honeybees are not at the same level as the animals that have been able to learn symbols as numbers and perform complex tasks. But the results have implications for what we know about learning, reversing tasks, and how the brain creates connections and associations between concepts."
He added: "Discovering how such complex numerical skills can be grasped by miniature brains will help us understand how mathematical and cultural thinking evolved in humans, and possibly, other animals." The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
In a Y-shaped maze, individual bees were trained to correctly match a character with a number of elements. They were then tested on whether they could apply their new knowledge to match the character to various elements of the same quantity (in the same way that '2' can represent two bananas, two trees or two hats). A second group was trained in the opposite approach, matching a number of elements with a character. While both could grasp their specific training, the different groups were unable to reverse the association and work out what to do when tested with the opposite (character-to-number or number-to-character). As for what this means, Dr. Scarlett Howard, the researcher who conducted the experiment, said: "This suggests that number processing and understanding of symbols happens in different regions in bee brains, similar to the way separate processing happens in the human brain. Our results show honeybees are not at the same level as the animals that have been able to learn symbols as numbers and perform complex tasks. But the results have implications for what we know about learning, reversing tasks, and how the brain creates connections and associations between concepts."
He added: "Discovering how such complex numerical skills can be grasped by miniature brains will help us understand how mathematical and cultural thinking evolved in humans, and possibly, other animals." The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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I guess you don't like food.
Much of our food is either directly or indirectly from pollination where bee's are really good at this.
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Much of our food is either directly or indirectly from pollination where bee's are really good at this.
No, it's not. By calories, most food is grain-based. Grains are 100% wind pollinated. Bees have no pollination role whatsoever in wheat, barley, maize, oats, or rye. Peas, beans, and soybeans are self-pollinating, where literally the same flower on the plant pollinates itself. Technically wind pollinated as well, though the wind doesn't have to carry particles very far at all.
Note that this also means the entire meat food chain is independent of bees. Beef cattle live on grass for the first 2/3rds of
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Take your dirty bags of gold, and your 9/11 dancing Mossad, and go the fuck back to the Israel you fight so hard for. We don't like religious leaders who suck baby dicks here in america. We're a god fearing nation, so we wait till they're at least 11. Take AIPAC with you too, cause those traitors don't belong here either.
nah, nevermind, AIPAC can stay. It might be TECHNICALLY illegal for
Spelling Bee? (Score:4, Funny)
we had it all wrong all this time. It's mathing-bee.
Brain analogy (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it? The bio-inspired algorithms normally associated with swarming or ant colonies etc. are statistical in nature and use many simple processing elements or samples (a single ant or bee) to do something collectively that is useful or surprisingly complex.
This is different. It's showing that individual bee brains are surprisingly smart. If anything this makes it less impressive that the collective behavior of a beehive is so sophisticated, since the individual processing elements are more sophisticated and flexible than we thought.
Re:Brain analogy (Score:4, Funny)
And I, for one, welcome our new unexpectedly-individually-intelligent hive-capable insect overlords.
Bees are now known to be smarter. What later? (Score:2)
Maybe later:
Bees will be found to be able to do more complex math.
Bees will be able to be mathematical wizards.
Bees will be programmers.
Humans will sleep all day while bees do the work.
NOPE! Study is a worthless piece of shit. (Score:5, Informative)
This is by the "same Australian-French team" which FAILED to notice faults in its own methodology, confusing color conditioning and random choice with "bees know math". [slashdot.org]
Which can be an excuse once.
I.e. That they are simply incompetent and rather stupid people who have somehow achieved advanced degrees.
To be fair, that happens more often than one might think.
But this time this is SCIENTIFIC FRAUD.
For fucks sake... they are doing the same damn experiment and getting the same damn values as the last time.
And they are supposedly not getting that the "experiment" DICTATES that the bees will be getting the "correct answer" 50% of the time by pure chance.
There is no chance in hell that bees could get less than 0.5 ratio in matching numbers and symbols and vice versa.
Which means that 0.5 is actually the bottom of the test, the zero line - the range above that is actual testing.
I.e. Their proportions of 0.620 (CIs = 0.523, 0.711; z = 2.38, p = 0.018), 0.660 (CIs = 0.564, 0.748; z = 3.14, p = 0.002) etc. are actually around 0.24 and 0.32 - which is way out of their confidence intervals.
Hell, even when "wrong" their bees kept getting results around 0.5 ratio.
Bees in both groups were unable to perform this reversal test at a level significant from chance
expectation, with bees in Group 1 choosing the correct sign at a proportion of 0.550 (CIs = 0.452,
0.645; z = 1.00, p = 0.318; figure 3c) and bees in Group 2 choosing the correct numerosity at a
proportion of 0.520 (CIs = 0.390, 0.649; z = 0.24, p = 0.346; figure 3d ).
And still, somehow, that didn't arouse their suspicion?
That even when they fail, bees still can't seem to get it more wrong than around 50% of the time?
Five people looked at those numbers and thought "That makes sense."?
I.e. Either they are dumber than their bees... or they are committing scientific fraud.
TLDR: Bees are not "surprisingly smart" any more or less than a coin would be. This study is BULLSHIT.
hashtagNotTheBees
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Yes, that's exactly how a multiple choice question with two options should work.
Amazing (Score:2)
I know a few humans who can't manage this.
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I know a few humans who can't manage this.
Bees can solve math problems that even computers find difficult, let alone humans. I remember learning, quite a few years ago, about experiments that show bees are able to quickly solve travelling salesman [theguardian.com] problems that would take computers days.
(That is finding the optimum route between multiple points.)
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"Math is hard." --Barbie :P
Arabic numerals? (Score:1)
Why aren't we using American numerals? America first!
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Agreed, why convert to Arabic numerals [youtu.be] when you have a well-established, perfectly working system already? Totally unnecessary.
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Re: Arabic numerals? (Score:1)
N contains more "ink" than a T. Maybe they just learned so associate "larger symbol" with "more food."
Symbols (Score:3)
N contains more "ink" than a T. Maybe they just learned so associate "larger symbol" with "more food."
In theory, Bees have already quite an andvanced visual system (for an insect, that is) which is supposed to be able to recognize some type of patterns (look at all the patterns that flower display, specially in the light's wavelenght that bees are sensitive to - google for "nectar guides", "flower guides" or "flower UV pattern".
Initially, flower evolved it as a some sort of "landing runway indicator", but it's very likely that the bees could eventually learn to distinguish the flowers by their patterns too
They get a B (Score:4, Funny)
The truth comes out (Score:2)
If they can understand numbers, that means we can start setting production quotas. And if they don't meet their honey quotas, they can be punished - or terminated.
Get off your lazy bee asses and make more honey!
Should have used Asian giant hornets (Score:1)
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The fork in the maze might have been a problem, though.
I, for one (Score:1)
Welkome our new bee overlords
complex? (Score:2)
"Discovering how such complex numerical skills can be grasped by miniature brains will help us understand how mathematical and cultural thinking evolved in humans, and possibly, other animals."
maybe 'numerical skills' aren't as complex for a brain to grasp as we think they are. if we would expand these experiments on other animals, we might find that most of them are able to put 1 and 1 together.
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Many animals, especially birds, can count and do simple math in the range up to 10.
One of the experiments I remember is building a hide out for making photos of the birds. But eagles e,g. refuse to go home to the nest when they see someone hiding. So the researchers made the hideouts big and hid more and more people inside. So when there where some inside, the eagle would just circle at high altitude and watch. As soon as all people left the hideout, and went away, he went back to the nest. You needed about
So bunnies can multiply? (Score:1)
It would make sense.
Beers Can Link Idiots To Publishers (Score:2)
And they're helpful in the peer-review process, too!
They are building Pratchett's HEX (Score:1)
The Y-shaped maze is a basic component (like a single gate) that can be used in large numbers to build a computer where insects is the working medium.
“Well, we think it might be able to do quite complicated maths. If we can get enough bugs in it.'
No. (Score:1)
> In a Y-shaped maze, individual bees were trained to correctly match a character with a number of elements
THAT'S what the bees are trained to do. Saying a bee "understands the concept of zero" or whatever is almost as ridiculous as anthropomorphizing statistics into ""AI"" that ""understands"" anything.
Mathematics, zero, etc. are abstractions that are accessible through LANGUAGE. A bee might recognize two things, but it does not have access to the abstraction that is Two.
(As far as the AI, it doesn't un
I, for one (Score:1)