Honey Bees Understand the concept of Zero

Scientists from RMIT University, Australia and Université de Toulouse, France have discovered that honey bees can understand the concept of zero. Apart from humans, rhesus monkeys and African grey parrots were found to know the concept of zero. Even some ancient human civilizations like Romans did not realize the significance of zero. 

The brain of honey bees contains 960,000 neurons. The honey bees are well known for complex skills like producing honey, constructing nest and maintaining their colony. Previously, researchers have discovered the ability of honey bees to count and differentiate up to four objects. Their ability of understanding the concept of zero surprises scientists and others.

(Honey Bees. Picture Courtesy: Pixabay)

In this research, the scientists trained a group of honey bees to choose the smallest number to get reward of sugar water. They displayed two pictures which contains 1 to 4 black shapes on a white background. The honey bees had to flew towards the picture with lesser number of black shapes to get the reward. If they flew towards the picture with larger number of black shapes, they would get bitter quinine. 

After the honey bees trained with the pictures containing black shapes, the scientist displayed a white background with no black shapes along with another picture containing black shapes. Interestingly, 63 % of the time the honey bees chose blank white picture. This experiment shows that they can understand the emptiness, which we call ‘zero’.  They also understand that ‘zero’ is lower than the black shapes. 

To confirm whether the bees understand the concept of zero or they just chose the blank white picture, the scientists trained another group of bees to select the largest number. In this experiment, the bees will get sugar water if they choose the picture with larger number of black shapes. After the training, the scientists displayed an empty picture and a picture with black shapes. Amazingly, the bees chose the picture with black shapes. Thus, the scientists have proved that the honey bees can understand the concept of zero. 

The scientists say that this discovery can be used to design and train Artificial Intelligence.