Bees order numbers in increasing size from left to right, a study has shown for the first time, supporting the much-debated theory that this direction is inherent in all animals including humans.
Research has found that even before children learn to count, they start organizing growing quantities from left to right in what has been called the “mental number line.”
However the opposite direction has been found in people from cultures that use an Arabic script which reads from right to left.
Photo: AFP
“The subject is still being debated between those who think the mental number line has an innate character and those who say it is cultural,” said Martin Giurfa, a professor at the Research Center on Animal Cognition at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.
There has been recent evidence that newborn babies and some vertebrate animals, including primates, organize numbers from left to right.
Giurfa led a study, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), aiming to find out if the same holds true for insects, via an experiment on bees.
Photo: AFP
“It has already been shown that bees are able to count — at least up to five,” Giurfa said.
They also process information differently in the two hemispheres of their brains, he added. This trait they seem to share with humans, and is thought to be a potential reason for “the existence of the mental number line,” Giurfa said.
A NUMBERS GAME
For the experiment, the researchers had individual honeybees fly into the first of two compartments of a wooden box. Sugar-water was then used to entice the bees to select a number affixed to the middle of the back of the second compartment.
The number stayed the same for each individual bee, but varied randomly across the group from between one, three or five, in shapes of circles, squares or triangles.
Once the bees were trained to fly towards their set number, the researchers removed it and put another number on both sides of the second compartment, leaving the middle blank.
They then removed the sugar-water reward and observed which way the bees went.
For example, if the bee was trained to select the number three, and was now faced with two number ones on either side and nothing in the middle, which way did they fly?
Around 80 percent of the time the bees chose the option on the left — the “correct choice” if brains order numbers from left to right, Giurfa said.
But if those same bees were given two number fives to choose from, they went right, again supporting the mental number line.
And bees trained to go for number one went to the right for a number three, while bees targeting a five went left for their three.
So if animals do in fact think of numbers from left to right, why is this not true for all humans?
Giurfa said it was more complicated than directly choosing between nature and nurture.
Even if the mental number line “is innate, culture can still modify it, even reverse it — or on the contrary accentuate it,” he said.
Bees, on the other hand, have to stick to what nature dictates.
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
RSS