When I was in grad school, wise advisors counseled me not to take on a big, important topic for my dissertation, because the chance of failure was too high. I didn't heed them, and as a result had two false starts before settling for a mundane but manageable project.
Scarlett Howard wasn't listening to anyone's advice when she took on a dissertation project that any neuroscientist could have told her was a lost cause. She earned her PhD (in Melbourne) by teaching bees to do arithmetic.
Just as impressive to me is the fact that she taught the bees our symbolic language (because we aren't smart enough to decode their language).
With insects, a lot of work goes into ensuring you asked the question in the right way. You can't give them a human test. They need the right motivation. They need to understand the question to be able to answer it.
Read experimental details in the journal article and I think you'll agree she wasn't cheating, that the bees' performance can't be explained without understanding elementary concept of number. These are tasks we wouldn't expect a child to be able to perform until age 3, at least.
"Bees are not as simple as we used to think they are. Or even as some people still think they are."
Read about Howard's work in this Quanta Magazine article.
