SYDNEY - Researchers in Australia have discovered that honey bees have the ability to count — at least to the number four.

A scientist from the University of Queensland put five markers inside a tunnel and placed nectar in one of them, Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio reported.

Honey bees placed in the tunnel flew to the marker with the food, and would still fly to the same marker stripe when the food was removed.

"We find that if you train them to the third stripe, they will look subsequently in the third stripe," researcher Mandyam Srinivasan said.

"If you train them to the fourth stripe, they will look the fourth stripe and so on. But their ability to count seems to go only up to four. They can't count beyond four.

"The more we look at these creatures that have a brain the size of a sesame seed, the more astonished we are. They really have a lot of the capacities that we so-called higher human beings possess."

The research was carried out jointly with Swedish researcher Marie Dacke.

Horses can count. Why is it so amazing that bees can?

What a waste of money.

Because Anthropologists are the key for curing cancer? I'll leave that to people who study the human body, not bugs. Though I agree the study is silly.

..but you know, counting bees today are tomorrow's killer assassins that can strike four people in a preset order. :lol:

I personally find bees' counting abilities rather interesting.
By finding out what "lower" lifeforms can do, and how, may help in understanding how some things in humans' brains work.

Because Anthropologists are the key for curing cancer? I'll leave that to people who study the human body, not bugs.

ANTHROPOLOGIST = STUDY OF HUMANS AND HUMAN CULTURE

ENTOMOLOGY = STUDY OF BUGS

okay thanks