A new study from the University of Trento in Italy has found that bees can count, despite some scientists' skepticism about their abilities. The study found that while bees are typically skilled at pattern perception, they can differentiate between visual cues. The research was conducted to account for how bees actually see the world, rather than relying on human assumptions. Previous experiments involved associating invented symbols with numerical values that the bees were trained to recognize. However, critics suggested that bees may have been pattern-matching rather than counting, and their vision may not be sharp enough to resolve the images presented to them. The researchers reanalyzed the visual patterns used in previous experiments to reflect how bees see them, not how humans do. The results suggest that bees are sensitive to numbers, not relying solely on visual cues, and this supports the earlier conclusion that they are more likely to rely on numbers.