The vastness of space has always captivated humanity, sparking endless questions about our place in the universe. Are we truly alone? If not, what does intelligent life beyond Earth look like, and how might we communicate with it?
While the existence of extraterrestrial life is a scientific possibility, the immense distances between stars present a formidable challenge. Our closest neighboring star is a staggering 4.4 light-years away, meaning any round-trip communication would likely take over a decade, even with optimistic estimates.
So, how can we bridge this gap when we have no shared language? Enter the humble bee, a creature with a mind as alien to us as any potential extraterrestrial.
Despite the vast differences between human and bee brains, both species possess the ability to do mathematics. In a recent paper published in the journal Leonardo, we argue that this shared mathematical capacity could form the basis of a "universal language" that might one day facilitate communication across the stars.
The concept of mathematics as a universal language is not without precedent. Galileo Galilei, writing in the 17th century, described the universe as a grand book "written in the language of mathematics." Science fiction has also explored this idea, with novels like "Contact" and "The Three-Body Problem" imagining mathematical communication between humans and aliens.
Real-world scientific efforts have also utilized mathematics and numbers to attempt universal communication. The golden records accompanying the Voyager space probes launched in 1977, for example, were etched with mathematical and physical quantities to convey a story of our world to potential extraterrestrials.
But how can we test the effectiveness of a universal language without actual aliens? This is where bees come in.
A creature with two antennae, six legs, and five eyes may sound like an alien, but it also describes a bee. Bees and humans share a common ancestry that diverged over 600 million years ago, yet both possess communication, sociality, and mathematical abilities. Since parting ways, honeybees and humans have independently developed unique but effective means of communication and cooperation within complex societies.
Humans have language; honeybees have the waggle dance, a complex movement that communicates the location of food sources, including distance, direction, and resource quality. Given our vast evolutionary separation and differences in brain size and structure, bees could be considered an insectoid alien model right here on Earth.
Our research has explored the mathematical abilities of bees. In a series of experiments between 2016 and 2024, we worked with freely-flying honeybees that voluntarily participated in outdoor math tests in exchange for sugar water.
During these tests, bees demonstrated the ability to solve simple addition and subtraction, categorize quantities as odd or even, and order items, including an understanding of zero. They even showed the capacity to link symbols with numbers, akin to how humans learn Arabic and Roman numerals.
Despite their tiny brains, bees have exhibited a rudimentary capacity for mathematics and problem-solving with quantities. Their ability to add and subtract one provides a foundation for more abstract mathematical concepts. Theoretically, this basic arithmetic operation allows bees to represent all natural numbers.
If two seemingly alien species like humans and honeybees can perform mathematics, along with many other animals, it suggests that mathematics could indeed be the foundation of a universal language. If extraterrestrial species exist with sufficiently advanced brains, our work indicates they may possess the capacity for mathematics as well.
This raises further questions about whether different species might develop unique mathematical approaches, akin to dialects in language. Such discoveries would also help answer the fundamental question of whether mathematics is a human construct or an inherent consequence of intelligence, thus making it universal.
This article, co-authored with Andrew Greentree of RMIT, is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.
