Researchers from the University of Valencia (UV) and the University of Oxford have discovered that some insects have a sophisticated counting mechanism, a cognitive ability that until now was believed to be exclusive to vertebrate animals.
Specifically, in a work published in the magazineFrontiers in Psychologydescribe howthe so-called flour beetle ( Tenebrio molitor ) is capable of counting the number of rival males with whom it competes for a femalebefore mating. The males of this species of beetle face stiff competition to fertilize the females since, after mating, they run the risk that other rival males copulate with the same female and displace their sperm completely – through a specialized structure that present on your penis. For a male’s sperm to be safe and kept in storage by the female, it takes seven to ten minutes, a key period in which the meal beetle remains alert andspend more or less time “watching over” the female depending on the number of competitors in the vicinity.
“When they detect few rivals, and the risk of a second male displacing his sperm is very low, the males abandon the female within seconds of finishing copulation to look for food or other females”, explains Pau Carazo, principal investigator of the study. However, as the average density of males in the vicinity increases and the risk of the female mating with a second male increases, the males in turn increase the time they remain with the female after copulation. -called “couple guard” -, in order to prevent it from mating with other males.
The work of the University of Valencia suggests that flour beetles are capable of determining the number of individuals in a group without using continuous variables: rrecognize each individual separatelyyesaccumulate in their memory the number of different individualsthere is to calculate how many are present in your immediate environment. This finding has a greater scope than mere curiosity. “In recent years, it has been discovered that the basic cognitive characters that allow us to count – and that underlie our mathematical abilities – are shared with many other species of vertebrates and, now, invertebrates, which suggests that they could be common to all of them and that, probably, are much more widespread than was suspected, “says Carazo.
The ability discovered in the flour beetles, and which meets the characteristics of what is called proto-counting, differs from what we understand by counting in humans becausedoes not imply an abstract concept of number.
