Honeybees pass numerical cognition test, study finds

New research led by Monash University has now addressed the recent international debate over whether bees are truly assessing numbers or simply reacting to visual patterns. The verdict: honeybees can process numerical information. 

The study highlights the necessity of designing cognitive experiments that align with an animal’s specific sensory and biological constraints. When stimuli are evaluated from a bee’s-eye view, the evidence for numerical cognition is strengthened rather than diminished.

The study, published recently in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, re-examined previous critiques of bee intelligence by accounting for the honeybee’s unique sensory and perceptual constraints. By evaluating experimental stimuli from a biologically relevant perspective, researchers demonstrated that previous criticisms, which suggested that bees were merely sensitive to visual cues such as spatial frequency, do not hold up.

Monash University Senior Lecturer Dr Scarlett Howard, from the Monash School of Biological Sciences, said the findings underscore the importance of avoiding human-centric biases in animal research.

“We must put the animal’s perspective first when assessing their cognition, or we may under- or overestimate their abilities,” said Dr Howard. “We see and experience the world quite differently from animals, so we must be careful of centring human perspectives and senses when studying animal intelligence.”

The research team argues that to accurately assess cognitive abilities, experiments must be designed to match the natural sensory capacities of the subject species.

Dr Mirko Zanon, from the Centre for Mind Brain Sciences at the University of Trento and first author on the study, said that ignoring how an animal perceives the world risks leading scientists to the wrong conclusions.

“There has been a debate about whether bees are really ‘counting’ or just reacting to visual patterns. Our results show that this criticism doesn’t hold when you consider the biology of the animal,” said Dr Zanon. “When we analyse the stimuli in a way that reflects how bees actually see the world, what remains is actual sensitivity to number.”

Dr Howard added, “It can be challenging to put ourselves in the mind of a bee to imagine how they see the world, but trying to see the world through an animal’s eyes is an essential part of our work. The bees always surprise us with how they move through the world, interpret our questions, and make decisions.”