Bees order numbers in increasing size from left to right, a study has shown for the first time, supporting the much-debated theory that this direction is inherent in all animals including humans.
Bees order numbers in increasing size from left to right, a study has shown for the first time, supporting the much-debated theory that this direction is inherent in all animals including humans.
Western research has found that even before children learn to count, they start organizing growing quantities from left to right in what has been called the “mental number line”.
However the opposite direction has been found in people from cultures that use an Arabic script which reads from right to left.
“The subject is still being debated between those who think the mental number line has an innate character and those who say it is cultural,” said Martin Giurfa, a professor at the Research Center on Animal Cognition at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.
There has been recent evidence that newborn babies and some vertebrate animals, including primates, organize numbers from left to right.
