TY - JOUR
T1 - Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction
AU - Howard, Scarlett R.
AU - Avarguès-Weber, Aurore
AU - Garcia, Jair E.
AU - Greentree, Andrew D.
AU - Dyer, Adrian G.
N1 - Funding Information:
S.R.H. acknowledges the Company of Biologists JEB Travelling Fellowship (grant no. JEBTF–170217) and the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. A.A.-W. acknowledges CNRS and Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse 3). A.D.G. acknowledges the support of an ARC Future Fellowship (grant no. FT160100357).
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019 The Authors.
PY - 2019/2/6
Y1 - 2019/2/6
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85061338912&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.aav0961
DO - 10.1126/sciadv.aav0961
M3 - Article
C2 - 30775440
AN - SCOPUS:85061338912
SN - 2375-2548
VL - 5
JO - Science Advances
JF - Science Advances
IS - 2
M1 - eaav0961
ER -