Casually dropped this tidbit

ARTICLE TEXT:

Humans' invention of zero was crucial for modern mathematics and science, but we're not the only species to consider "nothing" a number. Parrots and monkeys understand the concept of zero, and now bees have joined the club, too.

Honey bees are known to have some numerical skills such as the capacity to count to four, which may come in handy when keeping track of landmarks in their environment. To see whether these abilities extended to understanding zero, researchers trained 10 bees to identify the smaller of two numbers. Across a series of trials, they showed the insects two different pictures displaying a few black shapes on a white background. If the bees flew to the picture with the smaller number of shapes, they were given delicious sugar water, but if they flew toward the larger number, they were punished with bitter-tasting quinine.

Once the bees had learned to consistently make the correct choice, the researchers gave them a new option: a white background containing no shapes at all. Even though the bees had never seen an empty picture before, 64% of the time they chose this option rather than a picture containing two or three shapes, the authors report today in Science. This suggests that the insects understood that "zero" is less than two or three. And they weren't just going for the empty picture because it was new and interesting: Another group of bees trained to always choose the larger number tended to pick the nonzero image in this test.

The latest news, commentary, and research, free to your inbox daily In further experiments, the researchers showed that bees' understanding of zero was even more sophisticated: For example, they were able to distinguish between one and zero—a challenge even for some other members of the zero club. Advanced numerical abilities like this could give animals an evolutionary advantage, helping them keep track of predators and food sources. And if an insect can display such a thorough grasp of the number zero, write the researchers, then this ability may be more common in the animal kingdom than we think.

Source

With the way they tested, couldn't it just have been the difference between "more white" and "less white" and not an actual numerical understanding?
- And they weren't just going for the empty picture because it was new and interesting: Another group of bees trained to always choose the larger number tended to pick the nonzero image in this test.
- How is that different than counting?
thank you king
thank you so much for reposting the article text in the comments! it's so much more accessible (fewer taps) this way.

Wait until you find out ants pass the mirror test.

I didn't even realize they could see much at all tbh. I thought most of their navigation was through smell! This is a super interesting article!

Bees and recent humans:

The bees just thinking more black bad, less black good. No black best. I don't think it's actually counting.

I don't think it's actually counting.
Right. Pretty racist though.

I'm not convinced that this represents "understanding the concept of zero" in a nontrivial sense. Are there species that can be taught to pick the picture with fewer shapes but then don't prefer a picture with no shapes?

CROWS NOW BEES?

Just read the article. 64% is awfully near to 50%. Specially if the number of trials was low.

Its a 28% increase. To me, thats colloquially significant.
- Now, I went to the research article. The number of trials (n) was 10. To me, this is not strong evidence. If an independent group would take upon this work and find similar results, I would very much be inclined to change my mind.

Heh. I'm sure we all know a few of those non-"recent" humans that can't seem to grasp the concept. I just hope they're in lower numbers than expected this November. 😶

that's so interesting. I feel like we humans abuse the ability to choose nothing.

🤔Say more.