Honey bees: we all know that without them sticking their noses into plants and spreading the love/pollen, humanity would cease to exist. But they’re not just promiscuous pollinators; scientists recently discovered that they are also busy little mathematical whizzes, for not only do they have some facility with numbers – possessing the ability to count landmarks as they forage – they also have a rudimentary understanding of numbers including the concept of zero. Only relatively recently grasped by humans (the earliest evidence probably dating to Babylonians), the idea of ‘zero’ is understood by primates, dolphins, birds and humans beyond nursery age. And, we now know, bees.
Insects are a mighty, complex universe of wonders, one in which entomologists are immersed and the rest of us swat, squish and squirm our…
