Wait until you find out ants pass the mirror test.
Casually dropped this tidbit
Submitted 7 months ago by ickplant@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e089ab60-1953-4d0f-9098-d05ed6ef07c6.png
Comments
kromem@lemmy.world 7 months ago
dingus@lemmy.world 7 months 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!
anzo@programming.dev 7 months ago
Amazing, specially considering that gorillas either fight or flee their reflection on mirrors. There are videos on YouTube, quite entertaining btw.
Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 7 months 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.
ickplant@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Interesting stuff!
elxeno@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Steak@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
The bees just thinking more black bad, less black good. No black best. I don’t think it’s actually counting.
RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
I don’t think it’s actually counting.
Right. Pretty racist though.
Steak@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Lol
idiomaddict@feddit.de 7 months ago
They should do a control with 75% of the square covered with one black pip vs 25% covered by five.
Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee 7 months 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?
Steak@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
They are just avoiding black dude it’s that simple.
Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
You need to be able to count in order to compare levels of black.
Steak@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
That’s definitely not true. You can tell different sized block blobs from one another.
littlebluespark@lemmy.world 7 months 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. 😶
elxeno@lemm.ee 7 months 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
lugal@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
This might be hard for you to understand but there might even be zero of them left
frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml 7 months ago
Sounds like a snarky suckjob for genociders to me
anzo@programming.dev 7 months ago
Just read the article. 64% is awfully near to 50%. Specially if the number of trials was low.
undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Its a 28% increase. To me, thats colloquially significant.
anzo@programming.dev 7 months 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.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 7 months 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?
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
CROWS NOW BEES?
anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
that’s so interesting. I feel like we humans abuse the ability to choose nothing.
KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
🤔Say more.
anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
I’d rather do nothing useful and continue doomscrolling my Lemmy feed.
Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Maybe this is just my hippocampus privilege, but I have a hard time imagining the concept of zero as being difficult to comprehend
ickplant@lemmy.world 7 months 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.
Source
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 months ago
With the way they tested, couldn’t it just have been the difference between “more white” and “less white?”
NekoRogue@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
meliaesc@lemmy.world 7 months ago
How is that different than counting?
big_slap@lemmy.world 7 months ago
thank you king
someacnt_@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hmm, “64%” part irks me. What if statistical error was involved?
huginn@feddit.it 7 months 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.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Amazing! Thanks for sharing. :-)
ickplant@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I love bees, and now I respect them even more. Glad it was interesting to someone other than me!
anothercatgirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
thank you so much for reposting the article text in the comments! it’s so much more accessible (fewer taps) this way.