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. It’s a finding that sheds new light on how numerical abilities may have evolved over millennia and even opens new possibilities for communication between humans and other species.

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. The RMIT University-led study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 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.

Studies have shown that a number of non-human animals have been able to learn that symbols can represent numbers, including pigeons, parrots, chimpanzees and monkeys. Some of their feats have been impressive — chimpanzees were taught Arabic numbers and could order them correctly, while an African grey parrot called Alex was able to learn the names of numbers and could sum the quantities.

Source (RMIT University. “Bees can link symbols to numbers, study finds.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 June 2019.)

Original article: Howard, S.R., Avarguès-Weber, A., Garcia, J.E., Greentree, A.D. and Dyer, A.G., 2019. Symbolic representation of numerosity by honeybees (Apis mellifera): matching characters to small quantities. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286(1904), p.20190238.