{"id":86865,"date":"2019-01-20T06:42:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-20T14:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/bees-may-understand-zero-a-concept-that-took-humans-millennia-to-grasp"},"modified":"2019-01-20T06:42:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T14:42:21","slug":"bees-may-understand-zero-a-concept-that-took-humans-millennia-to-grasp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/bees-may-understand-zero-a-concept-that-took-humans-millennia-to-grasp","title":{"rendered":"Bees May Understand Zero, a Concept That Took Humans Millennia to Grasp"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Brief mention of AI implications\u2026<\/p>\n

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As a mathematical concept, the idea of zero is relatively new in human society\u2014and indisputably revolutionary. It\u2019s allowed humans to develop algebra, calculus and Cartesian coordinates ; questions about its properties continue to incite mathematical debate today. So it may sound unlikely that bees \u2014 complex and community-based insects to be sure, but insects nonetheless \u2014 seem to have mastered their own numerical concept of nothingness.<\/p>\n

Despite their sesame-seed-sized<\/a> brains, honey bees have proven themselves the prodigies of the insect world. Researcher has found that they can count<\/a> up to about four, distinguish abstract patterns<\/a>, and communicate locations<\/a> with other bees. Now, Australian scientists have found what may be their most impressive cognitive ability yet: \u201czero processing,\u201d or the ability to conceptualize nothingness as a numerical value that can be compared with more tangible quantities like one and two.<\/p>\n

While seemingly intuitive, the ability to understand zero is actually quite rare across species\u2014and unheard of in invertebrates. In a press release, the authors of a paper<\/a> published June 8 in the journal Science<\/em> called species with this ability an \u201celite club\u201d that consists of species we generally consider quite intelligent, including primates, dolphins and parrots. Even humans haven\u2019t always been in that club: The concept of zero first appeared<\/a> in India around 458 A.D, and didn\u2019t enter<\/a> the West until 1200, when Italian mathematician Fibonacci brought it and a host of other Arabic numerals over with him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brief mention of AI implications\u2026 As a mathematical concept, the idea of zero is relatively new in human society\u2014and indisputably revolutionary. It\u2019s allowed humans to develop algebra, calculus and Cartesian coordinates ; questions about its properties continue to incite mathematical debate today. So it may sound unlikely that bees \u2014 complex and community-based insects to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}