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Maybe I missed it, but did the article completely neglect to actually describe what kind of arithmetic the bees were doing beyond a basic mention of addition an
by fromthestart 8y ago
Maybe I missed it, but did the article completely neglect to actually describe what kind of arithmetic the bees were doing beyond a basic mention of addition and subtraction? How large were the numbers? What was the success rate? Am I expecting too much from PBS?
- dekhn 8y agoActual paper link: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961 they can only increment or decrement a number by 1 ("honeybees were able to use color as a symbolic representation of the addition and subtraction signs and learned, during 100 appetitive-aversive trials, to thus add or subtract one element from different samples. ") The paper is fairly readable even outside the area of expertise. It's straightforward behavioral work. Amusingly they used sugar as the positive reward and quinine as the negative reward. I quite like the taste of quinine...
- magicseth 8y agoIt did mention a success rate of 70%. Though not how many numbers were on the cards.