The concept of zero — less than one , nothing , nada — is misleadingly complex . The firstplaceholder zerodates back to around 300 BCE , and the impression did n’t make its way to Western Europe until the 12th hundred . It take children until preschool to wind their brain around the concept . But scientists in Australia recently get wind a Modern animate being capable of understand zero : the honey bee . A2018 studyfinds that theinsectscan be taught the concept of nothing .
A few other animate being can see zero , allot to current research . dolphinfish , parrot , andmonkeyscan all understand the difference between something and nothing , but honey bees are the first insects proven to be able to do it .
The 2018 subject , published in the journalScience , find that beloved bees can order quantities based on “ greater than ” and “ less than , ” and can understand that nothing is less than one .
The research worker condition bee to identify images in the lab that showed the few number of elements ( in this pillowcase , dots ) . If they opt the image with the few circles from a set , they received sweetened water , whereas if they chose another image , they received bitter quinine .
Once the louse get that conception down , the researchers acquaint another challenge : The bees had to choose between a blank simulacrum and one with Zen on it . More than 60 percent of the time , the insects were successfully able-bodied to extrapolate that if they involve to select the fewest DoT between an image with a few dots and an range of a function with no dots at all , no dots was the correct resolution . They could grasp the concept that nothing can still be a numerical amount .
It ’s not whole surprising thatbeesare capable of such feats of intelligence . We already have it away that they cancount , teacheach other skill , communicatevia the “ shake dancing , ” and thinkabstractly . This is just more evidence that bees are strikingly healthy creature , despite the fact that their insect brainpower take care nothing like our own .
look at how far apart bees and primates are on the evolutionary tree , and how different their brains are from ours — they have fewer than 1 million neurons , while we have about86 billion — this finding raises a lot of new questions about the neural ground of understanding number , and will no doubt direct to further research on how the brain treat conception like zero .
