Bees seem to understand the idea of zero – the first invertebrate shown to do so. When the insects were encouraged to fly towards a platform carrying fewer shapes than another one, they apparently recognised “no shapes” as a smaller value than “some shapes”.

In a second experiment, other bees were trained in the same way, but this time they had to choose to land on a platform with either zero or between one and six objects. They consistently chose zero, but were less accurate and took more time when the other option was one rather than six objects.

Click here to read more: New Scientist: Bees are first insects shown to understand the concept of zero