Understanding zero It has been said that the development of an understanding of zero by society initiated a major intellectual advance in humans, and we have been thought to be unique in this understanding. Although recent research has shown that some other vertebrates understand the concept of the “empty set,” Howard et al. now show that an understanding of this concept is present in untrained honey bees (see the Perspective by Nieder). This finding suggests that such an understanding has evolved independently in distantly related species that deal with complexity in their environments, and that it may be more widespread than previously appreciated. Science, this issue p. 1124; see also p. 1069 Honey bees display an understanding that zero is an empty set at the base of the number line. Some vertebrates demonstrate complex numerosity concepts—including addition, sequential ordering of numbers, or even the concept of zero—but whether an insect can develop an understanding for such concepts remains unknown. We trained individual honey bees to the numerical concepts of “greater than” or “less than” using stimuli containing one to six elemental features. Bees could subsequently extrapolate the concept of less than to order zero numerosity at the lower end of the numerical continuum. Bees demonstrated an understanding that parallels animals such as the African grey parrot, nonhuman primates, and even preschool children.

中文翻译：

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蜜蜂中零的数字排序

理解零 有人说，社会对零理解的发展引发了人类的重大智力进步，我们被认为在这种理解上是独一无二的。尽管最近的研究表明其他一些脊椎动物理解“空集”的概念，但霍华德等人。现在表明，未经训练的蜜蜂中存在对这一概念的理解（参见 Nieder 的观点）。这一发现表明，这种理解是在远亲物种中独立进化的，这些物种处理其环境的复杂性，并且它可能比以前所认识的更广泛。科学，这个问题 p。1124; 另见第。1069 蜜蜂表现出一种理解，即零是数轴底部的空集。一些脊椎动物表现出复杂的数量概念——包括加法、数字的顺序排列，甚至零的概念——但昆虫是否能够理解这些概念仍然未知。我们使用包含 1 到 6 个元素特征的刺激来训练单个蜜蜂了解“大于”或“小于”的数字概念。蜜蜂随后可以在数值连续体的下端推断出小于到零数量的概念。蜜蜂表现出的理解与非洲灰鹦鹉、非人类灵长类动物甚至学龄前儿童等动物相似。我们使用包含 1 到 6 个元素特征的刺激来训练单个蜜蜂了解“大于”或“小于”的数字概念。蜜蜂随后可以在数值连续体的下端推断出小于到零数量的概念。蜜蜂表现出的理解与非洲灰鹦鹉、非人类灵长类动物甚至学龄前儿童等动物相似。我们使用包含 1 到 6 个元素特征的刺激来训练单个蜜蜂了解“大于”或“小于”的数字概念。蜜蜂随后可以在数值连续体的下端推断出小于到零数量的概念。蜜蜂表现出的理解与非洲灰鹦鹉、非人类灵长类动物甚至学龄前儿童等动物相似。