Bumblebees Use Sequential Scanning of Countable Items in Visual Patterns to Solve Numerosity Tasks.

HaDi MaBouDi,H Samadi Galpayage Dona,Peter Skorupski,Emma Buckley,Olli J Loukola,Lars Chittka,Panayiotis D Onoufriou,Elia Gatto

doi:10.1093/icb/icaa025

Abstract

Most research in comparative cognition focuses on measuring if animals manage certain tasks; fewer studies explore how animals might solve them. We investigated bumblebees’ scanning strategies in a numerosity task, distinguishing patterns with two items from four and one from three, and subsequently transferring numerical information to novel numbers, shapes, and colors. Video analyses of flight paths indicate that bees do not determine the number of items by using a rapid assessment of number (as mammals do in “subitizing”); instead, they rely on sequential enumeration even when items are presented simultaneously and in small quantities. This process, equivalent to the motor tagging (“pointing”) found for large number tasks in some primates, results in longer scanning times for patterns containing larger numbers of items. Bees used a highly accurate working memory, remembering which items have already been scanned, resulting in fewer than 1% of re-inspections of items before making a decision. Our results indicate that the small brain of bees, with less parallel processing capacity than mammals, might constrain them to use sequential pattern evaluation even for low quantities.

Highlights

Numerical cognition is viewed as a hallmark of higher cognitive abilities and intelligence in animals, perhaps because of the perceived association between mathematical competence and intelligence in humans (Dehaene 2011)
Video analyses of flight paths indicate that bees do not determine the number of items by using a rapid assessment of number; instead, they rely on sequential enumeration even when items are presented simultaneously and in small quantities
Seemingly complex cognitive tasks can sometimes be solved by elegantly simple shortcuts (Guiraud et al 2018), using very basic neural circuitry (MaBouDi et al 2017; Peng and Chittka 2017; Roper et al 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Numerical cognition is viewed as a hallmark of higher cognitive abilities and intelligence in animals, perhaps because of the perceived association between mathematical competence and intelligence in humans (Dehaene 2011). Numerical abilities have been found in primates (Brannon and Terrace 2000), birds (Rugani et al 2013), amphibians (Uller et al 2003), fish (Agrillo et al 2012), and some invertebrates (Chittka and Geiger 1995; Dacke and Srinivasan 2008; Gross et al 2009; Carazo et al 2012; Yang and Chiao 2016; Howard et al 2018), but few studies have explored the animals’ pattern inspection tactics by which such tasks are solved.

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