Casually dropped this tidbit

Comments

• ickplant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    With the way they tested, couldn’t it just have been the difference between “more white” and “less white?”

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    • NekoRogue@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      !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.!<

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    • meliaesc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How is that different than counting?

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  • big_slap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    thank you king

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  • someacnt_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hmm, “64%” part irks me. What if statistical error was involved?

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    • huginn@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      64% of the time 10 bees chose 0 is statistically significant but not with a low p-value.

      You’d need to invest a lot more time and effort into proving this to get the P-value lower and I don’t expect many institutions are willing to train 1000 bees to try and figure out if they get 0 or not.

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  • essteeyou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Amazing! Thanks for sharing. :-)

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    • ickplant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I love bees, and now I respect them even more. Glad it was interesting to someone other than me!

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  • anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    thank you so much for reposting the article text in the comments! it’s so much more accessible (fewer taps) this way.

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• kromem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Wait until you find out ants pass the mirror test.

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  • dingus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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!

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  • anzo@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Amazing, specially considering that gorillas either fight or flee their reflection on mirrors. There are videos on YouTube, quite entertaining btw.

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  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    One thing I like to do with my pets when they’re young is play with them through the mirror so they can make the connection that kitty getting their belly rubbed is the same kitty getting their belly rubbed.

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  • ickplant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Interesting stuff!

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• elxeno@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Bees and recent humans:

  Image

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• Steak@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

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  • RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t think it’s actually counting.

    Right. Pretty racist though.

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    • Steak@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Lol

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  • idiomaddict@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They should do a control with 75% of the square covered with one black pip vs 25% covered by five.

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  • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No black best

    This isn’t the point? That the vast majority of animals don’t have a working concept of “none” or “without” that they can form other logic with?

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    • Steak@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They are just avoiding black dude it’s that simple.

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  • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You need to be able to count in order to compare levels of black.

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    • Steak@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s definitely not true. You can tell different sized block blobs from one another.

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• littlebluespark@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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. 😶

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  • elxeno@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Found the article just for this part

    …recent humans. (Fibonacci introduced zero to Western mathematics around the year 1200.)

    A bit different from the bees’ “understanding the concept of zero”.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/is-beekeeping-wrong

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  • lugal@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This might be hard for you to understand but there might even be zero of them left

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  • frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Sounds like a snarky suckjob for genociders to me

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• anzo@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

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  • undergroundoverground@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Its a 28% increase. To me, thats colloquially significant.

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    • anzo@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

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• ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  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?

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• pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  CROWS NOW BEES?

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• anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

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  • KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    🤔Say more.

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    • anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’d rather do nothing useful and continue doomscrolling my Lemmy feed.

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• Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Maybe this is just my hippocampus privilege, but I have a hard time imagining the concept of zero as being difficult to comprehend

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