So Turns Out Bees Can Do Math — As If They Needed Another Reason To Be Amazing

So Turns Out Bees Can Do Math — As If They Needed Another Reason To Be Amazing

We've got a lot to thank bees for—our entire environment basically depends on their survival, after all. And as if they weren't impressive enough already, scientists just found out they can actually do basic arithmetic.

Scientists have already determined that bees possess some impressive cognitive skills, and this time around they set out to see if math is one of them: "Bees have demonstrated the ability to learn a number of rules and concepts to solve problems such as 'left/right,' 'above/below,' 'same/different,' and 'larger/smaller,'" the study reads.

After hours and hours of training, honeybees were taught to associate yellow shapes with subtraction (-1) and blue shapes with addition (+1). They then flew into a "decision chamber" where they were presented with a certain number of the shapes and given two paths to follow: one with the correct answer and one with the incorrect answer, based on whether they were doing addition or subtraction. If the bee saw three blue shapes, for example, the "right" answer would be four blue shapes. Researchers found that the bees actually answered the problems correctly about 75 percent of the time.

OK, so bees can add and subtract by one. Alone that may not be that big of a feat, but when you combine it with everything else the critter can do, you have one impressive list: