Abstract
ABSTRACTIn recent years honeybees have demonstrated intriguing numerical capacities, leading to the recent discovery of their ability to perform simple arithmetic by learning to add or subtract ‘one’ using symbolic representations of operators. When training an insect with a miniature brain containing less than one million neurons to understand a conceptual rule, the procedure is of vital importance. We explain in detail the controls and process of designing an experiment to test for complex behaviors in a relatively simple brained animal. Furthermore, we will discuss the finding that individual honeybees do not demonstrate a consistent learning scenario when trained to perform the same tasks, rather they appear to acquire arithmetic rules through individual processes.
Highlights
In recent years honeybees have demonstrated intriguing numerical capacities, leading to the recent discovery of their ability to perform simple arithmetic by learning to add or subtract ‘one’ using symbolic representations of operators
KEYWORDS Addition; arithmetic; learning; numeric cognition; subtraction. Arithmetic, such as addition and subtraction, is considered a complex task to perform due to the simultaneous requirements of both short-term/working memory and long-term memory [1]
The wide range of taxa that can perform addition and/or subtraction suggests that more animal species could share a capacity to learn arithmetic if given the correct opportunity
Summary
In recent years honeybees have demonstrated intriguing numerical capacities, leading to the recent discovery of their ability to perform simple arithmetic by learning to add or subtract ‘one’ using symbolic representations of operators. That with careful training procedures, honeybees could learn to use color as a prompt (symbolic cue) to add or subtract one item from an array of objects within a stimulus presented to them within a Y-maze. To increase the complexity of the task, the incorrect option could be higher, lower, or the same as the initial array of elements.
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