Scientists can get animals to do the strangest things. They’ve taught goldfish to drive cars, primates to perform calculations with Arabic numerals and giraffes to do statistical reasoning. But what’s the point?
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, biologist Scarlett Howard from Monash University in Australia – who has taught bees to tell the difference between odd and even numbers – defends the importance of these seemingly ecologically irrelevant experiments.
She argues that they can help us understand the secrets of animal cognition, and even potentially unlock future technological developments for humanity too.
