厉害了，小蜜蜂！

Zero is an extremely hard concept to understand. Quantities of things—whether they are bundles of fruit, communities of people, or blocks of wood for construction—are vital to our livelihood. But nothing, as far as the brain is concerned, is far different than something.

“0”其实是个很难理解的概念。事物的数量 - 无论是水果，人群还是建材 - 都对我们的生计至关重要。但就大脑而言，“没有东西”远远不同于“某种东西”。

Humans have had a hard time coming to terms with this concept. But our ability to grasp zero as a distinct numerical value is a vital part of modern mathematics, engineering, and technology. In recent years, we’ve learned that other animals have also developed an understanding of nothingness. Several species of non-human primates and birds, like the rhesus monkey and the African grey parrot, can all identify “none” as “something.” And, according to a report out this week in the journal Science, honey bees, apparently, belong to that math club as well.

人类很难接受这个概念。但是，我们把零作为一个独特数值的能力是现代数学，工程和技术的重要组成部分。近年来，我们了解到其他动物也开始了解“0”。非人灵长类和鸟类，如猕猴和非洲灰鹦鹉可以理解“0”，而根据本周在《科学》杂志上发表的一篇报道，蜜蜂很可能也可以理解“0”。

We already knew that the honeybee is no dummy. In previous studies, researchers have found that stingers have the intellectual wherewithal to count and discriminate objects in quantities of up to four. That’s already pretty impressive for a species that has far fewer neurons in their brains than any other animal with similar mathematical counting skills. In this new study, scientists at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia wanted to know if the buzzers could also prove their understanding of zero as a quantitative value. The team was surprised to find that the critters can, indeed: The bees could discriminate a value of one from zero with moderate ability, and that success increased when higher values were compared to zero.

我们已经知道蜜蜂不傻。在以前的研究中，研究人员发现带刺的蜂种拥有智力资源来计数和辨别最多4个物体。对于动物来说，这已经相当令人惊叹，它们大脑中的神经元数量远远低于其他具有相似数学计数技能的动物。在这项新研究中，墨尔本皇家理工大学的科学家们想知道蜜蜂是否也能证明他们对“0”的理解。团队惊讶地发现，这些小动物确实可以：蜜蜂的平均能力可以把一个数值从“0”区分开来，而当较数值与“0”差别更大时，成功率会增加。

To keep the bees interested in counting (a rather boring task), the researchers used sugar water as a reward. They taught the bees that when presented with cards with varying amounts of symbols, sugar water would sit behind the card with the least amount of symbols. The bees understood and would always fly to the low-symbol card—an impressive feat. Then, the researchers presented the bees with another set of two cards: This time, one had nothing on it and the other had either one symbol or more. When judging between zero or one, the bees flew to the card with nothing on it more than the card with one thing, showing that they understood that “nothing” was less than one on the numerical scale. As a whole, the bees were even better at distinguishing zero or nothing from larger numbers like four or five, showing that they understood how a numerical scale works, and where zero sits on it.

为了让蜜蜂对计数感兴趣(这是一项相当枯燥的任务)，研究人员用糖水作为奖励。他们教导蜜蜂，当给出不同数值符号的卡片时，糖水会以放在其中最小值的符号卡片后面。所以蜜蜂将理解并总是会飞向最低符号卡 - 这是一个令人印象深刻的壮举。然后，研究人员用另一套的两张牌向蜜蜂呈现：这一次，一张卡上面没有任何东西，另一张拥有一个或更多的符号。当在0或1之间进行判断时，蜜蜂更多地飞向了什么都没有的卡片上，这表明他们理解在数量上“没有”比“有”更少。总体而言，蜜蜂更擅长区分0和更大的数字，比如4或5，表明他们理解数值是怎么回事，以及零点在哪里。

Why is this achievement so interesting? In an accompanying commentary piece on the paper, Andreas Nieder, an animal physiologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, points out that the last common ancestor between humans, who can also obviously distinguish zero (starting at around four years old), and honey bees lived more than 600 million years ago with a far less developed brain than either species has now.

为什么这个成就如此有趣? 德国蒂宾根大学的动物生理学家 Andreas Nieder 在文章中的评论中指出，人类与蜜蜂的最后一个共同祖先也可以明显区分零(从四岁开始)，距今时间超过6亿年，其脑部发育程度远低于现在的任何物种。

At that point, humans and bees evolved separately, and bees developed a brain with far fewer neurons than big-brained people. For reference, a bee has fewer than 1 million neurons; a human has 86,000 million. Yet, both species both developed the ability to distinguish nothing. This, Neider suggests, means that numerical competence may be extremely valuable. “Studies examining animals in their ecological environments suggest that numerical competence is beneficial for animals by enhancing their ability to reproduce, navigate, exploit food sources, hunt prey, avoid predation, and engage in social interactions,” Neider says.

此后，人类和蜜蜂分开进化，蜜蜂的脑神经元数量比大脑的人少得多。作为参考，一只蜜蜂的神经元少于100万个; 一个人类有86,000万。然而，这两种物种都具有辨别0的能力。 Neider认为，这意味着数字能力可能非常有价值。Neider说：“研究表明，通过提高繁殖、导航、开发食物来源、捕猎猎物、躲避捕食者以及参与社会互动的能力，数值能力对动物有益。”

But how do these animals with such few neurons in their brains comprehend this hard mathematical concept? Scientists still don’t completely understand, but studies done in corvid songbirds and non-human primates have shown that a group of neurons in the brain dubbed “number neurons” might be the cells responsible for these numerical comprehensions. These cells respond in different ways depending on the number of components presented.

但是，这些动物脑中的如此少的神经元如何可以理解这一难以理解的数学概念?科学家们仍然没有完全理解，但是在鸦科和非人类灵长类动物中进行的研究表明，大脑中一组称为“数神经元”的神经元可能是负责这些数字理解的细胞。这些细胞根据看到的不同数量以不同的方式作出反应。

Neider writes that while our brains are clearly wired to process stimuli that are something—like a light stimulus triggers our visual neurons in the same way a sound stimulus makes our auditory neurons work—the concept of nothing is just as significant. Understanding better how our brains, and those of other species in the animal kingdom, comprehend “nothing” as a numerical value could help us better explain how we see and interact with the world.

Neider写道，尽管我们的大脑清楚地连接着处理刺激的东西 - 就像光刺激一样，触发我们的视觉神经元的方式与声音刺激使我们的听觉神经元发挥作用一样 - “0”的概念同样重要。更好地理解我们的大脑以及动物界其他物种的大脑如何理解“没有”作为数值可以帮助我们更好地解释我们如何看待世界并与世界互动。