
Bees can link symbols to numbers, study finds - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-bees-link.html
======
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Researchers have trained honeybees to match a character to a specific
quantity, revealing they are able to learn that a symbol represents a
numerical amount.

I don't know if this is very convincing. From what I see in the images shown
in the article, the "specific quantities" are represented by different
arrangements of various symbols- squares, stars etc.

The article doesn't say whether these arrangements were randomised in each
image.

For instance - the number "3" could be _always_ associated with the same
arrangement of any symbol. Say, a triangle formed by three identical symbol.
In that case it would be impossible to know whether the bees learned to count
the shapes or just identify their arrangment. Learning to identify a triangle
doesn't say anything about the ability to identify quantities.

The fact that neither of the two groups trained on the two different tasks
(character-to-quantity and quantity-to-character) could generalise their
learning to the opposite task also doesn't bode well. It is exactly what you
would expect to see if the setup for each task had some other, uncontrolled
for, variable that the bees "overfitted" to, rather than learning what is
theorised they did learn.

~~~
ordu
_> The article doesn't say whether these arrangements were randomised in each
image._

It is a popular science retelling a story. In the original scientific article
we can read

 _We used sets of stimuli with controlled surface area (set 1) and equal
element size area (set 2) with achromatic properties (black elements on white
background; electronic supplementary material, figure S1). The choice of
stimuli for each trial was pseudo-randomized with regards to set (1 or 2),
shape and arrangement of elements. Thus, bees were trained on both set 1 and
set 2._

 _In Group 1, this test consisted of showing a sign as the sample and then a
randomized set of abstract objects not previously seen by bees (set 3: random
set with chromatic properties)._

Your proposed possible mistake is a way too stupid for a modern experimental
psychology.

 _> For instance - the number "3" could be _always_ associated with the same
arrangement of any symbol. Say, a triangle formed by three identical symbol._

It is more interesting, I believe. I had not read the original article
thoroughly enough to find out could this be as you describe. There is a
figures with some stimuli, but I'm not sure that it contains all the stimuli
(to be sure it needs more reading, not just skimming).

Maybe this issue needs more testing, but in any case it is impossible to catch
all the mistakes like that. For example, our ability to see a figure formed by
a changing symbols, it is a property of our visual processing. Bees could have
some properties which we do not have, and it could be that their properties
could allow them to see some shapes formed by symbols, where we could see just
randomly placed symbols.

 _> The fact that neither of the two groups trained on the two different tasks
(character-to-quantity and quantity-to-character) could generalise their
learning to the opposite task also doesn't bode well. It is exactly what you
would expect to see if the setup for each task had some other, uncontrolled
for, variable that the bees "overfitted" to, rather than learning what is
theorised they did learn._

Yes, it is the most interesting part, because it goes perpendicular to a
common sense, and thus gives a direction to a subsequent research. It always
work like this: an experiment (a good one does) reveals something about
nature, but poses new questions. Then researchers all over the world start to
spend their grants on a sequels for the first research. At some point the
number of articles becomes overwhelming, and several especially proficient
scientists read all of them, studying methodology, combining data from
different research into one big data set, making statistics, and finally
they'd write a meta-research with a few hundreds of references to experimental
articles, trying to make sense of data.

Media just cherry-picking articles with a clickbait titles, and makes them
even more clickbaity. The most interesting articles for a newcomer would be a
meta-research articles, which do no sparky experiments itself, but analyze all
the data they could reach.

~~~
kazinator
> _Your proposed possible mistake is a way too stupid for a modern
> experimental psychology._

Bees have psychology now?

~~~
ordu
Not exactly. Non-human psychology is called ethology[1]. There are some
differences (you cannot ask animal to fill a questionnaire or ask how it
feels), but when it comes to an experimental psychology it is almost the same.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology)

------
empath75
Seems like one set of researchers has had two breakthrough studies of bee
intelligence. Has anyone reproduced this? I feel like for something this
incredible, we should perhaps wait until another team can reproduce the
results before getting too excited.

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menzoic
Reminds me of Neil deGrasse Tyson's comments on the "intelligence gap".

If bees can do this, how smart are we really? Compared to generally
intelligent AI or extraterrestrials, the difference between our intelligence
and a bees might not be much.

[https://youtu.be/Tt0uV5d8tss](https://youtu.be/Tt0uV5d8tss)

~~~
maxxxxx
I always think what the perspectives of a being that could live for millions
of years and had the computing power and memory and sensors of all of Earths
machines would be. I don’t think we could even comprehend the thoughts of this
being.

~~~
SantalBlush
I suspect that being would get insufferably bored.

~~~
bitwize
It would probably think up a way to strap boosters onto itself and cruise the
galaxy. Beats hanging around here.

~~~
andai
How do I attach rockets to my brain?

~~~
Dylan16807
What are you asking, exactly?

If you mean "you never said I had hands, gotcha", then yes you need to get
hands first.

If you're talking about the physical task, I don't understand how that could
be a problem. If you can move your body into a rocket, do that. If you can't,
put a big dome over top, down to bedrock, and attach the rockets to the
bedrock.

~~~
andai
I should have been more precise, because even I don't understand what I meant
anymore, & now can't even delete it.

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amelius
How do we know the bees don't simply use a learned lookup-table rather than
doing arithmetic?

During evaluation, did they present the bees with problems that they didn't
see before?

~~~
gpderetta
How do we know that humans do not? My mental process for simple arithmetic
does seem to involve multiple something that feels like lookup tables.

~~~
edna314
Yes, the difference is that you can synthesize numbers which are not (yet) in
the look up table. It would be super amazing if one could show that bees are
capable of doing that.

~~~
vageli
> Yes, the difference is that you can synthesize numbers which are not (yet)
> in the look up table. It would be super amazing if one could show that bees
> are capable of doing that.

Or rather, we can synthesize lookup tables from preexisting lookup tables.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Sure, but that extrapolation is called arithmetic.

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lelf
Non-paywalled papers:

• Symbolic representation of numerosity by honeybees (Apis mellifera):
matching characters to small quantities
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.023...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0238)

• Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961)

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tr33house
bees can link symbols to symbols?

~~~
romwell
No. Small quantities are represented with previously unseen symbols in
randomized positions.

This is what numbers _are_ (cardinals, or equivalence classes of sets under
bijection, if you wish).

So bees can _count_.

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yters
Don't most animals have the ability to learn associations? E.g. when the leash
jingles the dog knows it is time to go for a walk. Not sure this is the same
as humans doing arithmetic. Scientists seem quite anxious to make the jump
from associations to human level abstract thought, for some reason.

Not saying it is impossible, but these kinds of studies seem very handwavy and
not very careful with terminology.

~~~
nathan_long
I think the "abstract" part here was the concept of "three-ness" or "two-ness"
\- that the bees could see something that represents 3 and correctly choose
the path with three shapes, regardless of what the shapes were.

~~~
yters
Based on the picture of the experiment setup in the article, it's hard to
infer the bee understands 'three-ness'.

Based on this reasoning, does the bee already understand 'flowerness' since it
knows to get nectar from many different kinds of flowers?

Do dogs understand 'dogness' because they know to sniff the butt of any dog
that crosses their path?

Pretty sure I can create a simple AI that can distinguish three of something
under many different kinds and orientations within suitable constraints, and
have that capability associated with another easily distinguishable visual
code. Yet, I would never say I've made my computer understand 'threeness', as
the computer has no abstract reasoning capabilities whatsoever.

In general, how do we know when something understands '____ness' in the way we
understand '____ness'? Per my previous examples, either the article's meaning
is trivial, or unsubstantiated.

~~~
romwell
How about you just look at the paper?[0]

The positions of symbols were randomized, and they used symbols previously
unseen by bees.

The concept of three-ness (as a cardinal number) is just that: being able to
identify sets of objects which can be put into 1-to-1 correspondence with the
following set of asterisks: * * * .

The bees, according to the experiment, can do that.

Is this _our_ understanding of three-ness? Maybe not; there's also the notion
of ordinals (as in 3 is what follows 2, 2 is what follows 1, and 1 is where
you start). We have at least two different notions for numbers. But the notion
tested in the paper is good enough to do most mathematics with (cardinals and
ordinals are kind of the same until you reach infinity).

[0][https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019.0238)

~~~
yters
I won't deny it is a very interesting study and seems to be well put together.

However, the paper is trying to present the bee study as evidence that human
cognition is on a spectrum with animals, instead of a unique thing not found
in the rest of the animal kingdom as part of a larger project to identify
whether/how human cognition could have evolved from animal cognition:

"Nevertheless, there is no evidence that any species apart from Homo sapiens
have ever spontaneously developed symbolic representations of numerosity,
which opens the question of which animals are capable of learning symbolic
number representations, which are capable of generating such representations,
and whether this implies a fundamental difference in the mental processing of
Homo sapiens compared with other animals."

So, for the bee study to evidence an answer to their question, we need to know
whether this symbol-to-numerosity association the bees learn is the same sort
of thing as symbolic number representation that humans use. The study is
certainly a good step in that direction, but it seems to me there is a more
fundamental question that is not being asked. Are the bees really perceiving
'twoness' and 'threeness' in the cardinality sense you mention, or is there
some analog property, such as shape surface area, general shade of picture
(i.e. two will seem lighter than three), triangular configuration (three) vs
dots (two), etc. that the bees are responding to instead of exact cardinality?

To take a contrary perspective, why couldn't the bee symbol to number
association be the same sort of thing as the AI I mentioned in my previous
comment? The AI can recognize 2 and 3 symbols effectively, but it cannot
extrapolate beyond that, nor could we take the AI and build an arithmetic
module out of it through some kind of incremental training. The 2/3 recognizer
is a hardcoded piece of functionality in the AI that will never expand beyond
its core functionality. Perhaps 2/3 recognition is part of the hardcoded bee
behavior that is necessary for it to set landmarks and navigate. This is much
different than human arithmetic capability, where we can learn about 2s and 3s
through physical examples, and then realize there is such a thing as 'number'
and eventually realize there are an infinite number of 'numbers'.

So, for these two main reasons, despite its well constructed sophistication, I
don't see the study as very compelling evidence that the human cognitive
ability is not unique and merely part of a continuum wherein the dial can be
turned up from animal cognition to human cognition.

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palijer
I expect one of these days I'll see an article titled "Bees proven to be
Turing-Complete"

~~~
rdruxn
This really reminds me of the intelligent AI bees in Permutation City by Greg
Egan

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eddd
you don't need many neurons to do MNIST.

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jpkane
These creatures never cease to amaze me.

