Honeybees can solve maths tests without using numbers

The team, from the university’s Department of Computer Science working alongside international collaborators, published its study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 

This latest insight could be used to design more sophisticated machines based on the brains of animals, researchers believe, in addition to providing a new, alternative blueprint for testing numerical cognition in animals. 

Determining how different brains, especially those with a miniature brain, solve numerical tasks can provide valuable insight into the evolutionary roots of cognition. The ability to use numbers is a powerful cognitive capacity of humans, but replicating their full sophistication via AI is not possible with current approaches.

Through an approach commonly used to test numerical cognition in bees and other animals, the Sheffield team discovered that honeybees can discriminate between placards displaying different numbers of elements without their brains having to process numerical data.

According to the researchers, honeybees were individually trained to identify the placards: some honeybees learned to find a sugary reward at the placards that had the most shapes on display, while others learned to find the sugary treat at the placards showing the fewest shapes.