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Scientists Just Discovered a Surprising New Talent in Bees

Wouldn’t it be so embarrassing if a bee smoked you in the SATs

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Bees can count. They’re not going to be doing your taxes anytime soon, though after a little bit of evolution and a reading of the tax code, it’s not completely off the table.

A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B adds weight to a long-running debate about whether honeybees actually understand numbers or are just really good at spotting visual patterns. Some have argued that bees weren’t actually counting at all, just reacting to how busy or complex an image looked.

A team of researchers led by Monash University revisited earlier experiments, but this time they tried to see the data the way a bee would. That meant taking into account all the limitations inherent in a........

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