ArticleScience advances2019
Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction.
Article in Science advances, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Exploring the Neural Substrates of Number Sense: A Perspective on Genetics, Behaviour and Neural Circuity.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Review
- Honeybee adaptability to square comb foundation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The Social Relevance of Numbers: Insights from Animal Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Honeybee Sentience: Scientific Evidence and Implications for EU Animal Welfare Policy.Veterinary sciences · 2025Article
- Evolutionary Trajectories of Consciousness: From Biological Foundations to Technological Horizons.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- The neural basis of intuitive approximate number system in board game Go (Baduk) experts.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Honey Bees Can Use Sequence Learning to Predict Rewards from a Prior Unrewarded Visual Stimulus.Insects · 2025Article
- Proto-arithmetic abilities in zebrafish (Heliyon · 2024Article
- Non-symbolic estimation of big and small ratios with accurate and noisy feedback.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2024Article
- Through an animal's eye: the implications of diverse sensory systems in scientific experimentation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- What do the mushroom bodies do for the insect brain? Twenty-five years of progress.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- A perspective on neuroethology: what the past teaches us about the future of neuroethology.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2024Review
- Article
- Honey bees rely on associative stimulus strength after training on an olfactory transitive inference task.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Article
- Adult neurogenesis does not explain the extensive post-eclosion growth ofRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Ants combine object affordance with latent learning to make efficient foraging decisions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Numerical discrimination in Drosophila melanogaster.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Smart sharks: a review of chondrichthyan cognition.Animal cognition · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many animals understand numbers at a basic level for use in essential tasks such as foraging, shoaling, and resource management. However, complex arithmetic operations, such as addition and subtraction, using symbols and/or labeling have only been demonstrated in a limited number of nonhuman vertebrates. We show that honeybees, with a miniature brain, can learn to use blue and yellow as symbolic representations for addition or subtraction. In a free-flying environment, individual bees used this information to solve unfamiliar problems involving adding or subtracting one element from a group of elements. This display of numerosity requires bees to acquire long-term rules and use short-term working memory. Given that honeybees and humans are separated by over 400 million years of evolution, our findings suggest that advanced numerical cognition may be more accessible to nonhuman animals than previously suspected.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.