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Honeybees Can Put Two and Two Together

It takes a big brain—a human brain—to do math. Or so you might assume. But scientists have found that other animals, such chimpanzees, monkeys, and even pigeons can perform some addition and subtraction¹. Now new research shows that honeybees—with brains the size of sesame seeds—can perform basic math.

做数学需要大脑——人类的大脑。或者你可以这样假设。但科学家们发现，其他动物，如黑猩猩、猴子，甚至鸽子，也能做一些加法和减法。现在新的研究表明，拥有芝麻大小大脑的蜜蜂可以进行基本的数学运算。

Researchers put honeybees through 100 trials to train them to add and subtract. They put the bees in a Y-shaped maze² and presented them with a certain number of either yellow or blue shapes. Yellow indicated the bee should subtract, while blue meant they should add.

研究人员对蜜蜂进行了100次实验来训练它们做加法和减法。他们把蜜蜂放在一个y形迷宫中，给它们一些黄色或蓝色的形状。黄色表示蜜蜂应该做减法，而蓝色表示蜜蜂应该做加法。

The bee then entered the “decision chamber,” where it was presented with a correct answer on one side and an incorrect answer on the other side. If they picked the right answer they were rewarded with a sugary solution. If not, they got bitter tonic³ water. The researchers also put the bees through another test trial without a reward or punishment to make sure there weren’t any scent⁴ marks influencing the bees’ choices.

然后，蜜蜂进入“决策室”，在那里，它会看到一边是正确答案，另一边是错误答案。如果蜜蜂选对了答案，就会得到含糖溶液的奖励。如果没有，他们喝的是苦汤力水。研究人员还让蜜蜂进行了另一项没有奖励或惩罚的试验，以确保没有任何气味痕迹影响蜜蜂的选择。

At first the bees picked answers at random⁵. “You see that the ability of the bees to do it starts at about chance level, 50%, showing us the bees are just choosing randomly⁶. Over time, competence⁷ comes up to about 80%, so they actually start to perform quite well.”

起初，蜜蜂随机选择答案。“你可以看到蜜蜂的这种能力开始时大约是50%，这表明蜜蜂只是随机选择。随着时间的推移，他们的能力会提高到80%左右，所以它们实际上开始表现得相当不错。”

Scarlett Howard, one of the study authors and a postdoctoral research fellow in neurobiology and cognition at Paul Sabatier University in France. She says the bees were even able to add and subtract correctly when presented with a number they had never seen before. The study is in the journal Science Advances.

斯嘉丽·霍华德是这项研究的作者之一，也是法国保罗·萨巴蒂尔大学神经生物学和认知学的博士后研究员。她说，当蜜蜂看到一个他们从未见过的数字时，它们甚至能够正确地加减法。这项研究发表在《科学进展》杂志上。

“Things like this let us know there’s a lot of complexity⁸ there and their brains might not be as simplistic as we once thought.”

“以上事情让我们知道，复杂的事情很多，蜜蜂的大脑可能不像我们曾经认为的那样简单。”