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Scientists Teach Bumblebees How to ‘Play Football’
Researchers found untrained bumblebees could solve a novel tool-use task, with nearly 75% moving the ball to reach the reward.
- Recently published in the journal Science, a study by behavioral ecologist Olli Loukola and colleagues demonstrates that untrained bumblebees can spontaneously roll a Styrofoam ball to reach a rewarding stimulus overhead.
- German psychologist Wolfgang conducted a classic 'box-and-banana' experiment observing chimpanzees stacking crates to reach food, which this study replicates to test if bees exhibit similar spontaneous problem-solving.
- Some 80% of untrained bees successfully rolled the ball beneath a blue dot to reach an unreachable reward, despite having brains about 0.0002% the size of human brains according to Imperial College London.
- Loukola concluded that "very tiny brains can solve super complex problems," as the bees used the ball as a stepstool to reach the target without any prior training to perform the task.
- Flexible problem-solving is a vital skill for colony survival, and researchers suggest that future scientific efforts could eventually image the bumblebee brain while it solves tasks similar to this one.
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Finnish researchers conducted an old classic experiment on insects.
Bumblebees can solve problems like big-brained vertebrates
Bumblebees may be smarter than we give them credit for, with a new study showing the fuzzy insects have the cognitive plasticity required to overcome novel challenges.Continue ReadingCategory: Biology, ScienceTags: University of Helsinki, University of Oulu, University of Turku, Bees, Animal science, Behavior
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Total News Sources46
Leaning Left6Leaning Right10Center16Last UpdatedBias Distribution50% Center
Bias Distribution
- 50% of the sources are Center
50% Center
L 19%
C 50%
R 31%
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