New Studies Prove That Bumblebees Can Solve Puzzles and Even Have a 'Culture'
Bees pass on knowledge to their young just like people do.
Despite their tiny brain size, bumblebees might actually be smarter than you think. Behavioral ecologist Alice Bridges set out to determine whether these creatures have the capacity for learned behavior, as well as the ability to pass those behaviors down.
To do this, she and her colleagues at Queen Mary University needed to design a puzzle box that the bees could learn to solve. That alone was a challenge, though, since the bees proved to be incredibly smart. They learned to solve the puzzle, then even took it a step further.
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As Bridges' study in PLOS Journal explains, the researcher trained 'tutor bees' to solve a puzzle in two separate ways. Some learned method A--pushing a red tab to open a door with a reward--while others learned a similar method B (using a blue tab). When those tutor bees were introduced to different colonies, the bees in each colony learned how to solve the puzzle, too. That's not all, though: bees from each colony learned to solve the puzzle with the specific method (A or B) that their tutor bee had learned.
"We found that the behaviors spread among the colonies," Bridges told NPR. "They copied the demonstrators' behavior even when occasionally they discovered that they could do the alternative."
Isn't that wild? This proves that bees not only have problem-solving capacity, but they can learn to solve problems from one another, too. Technically--this long-term learned behavior is evidence that bumblebee colonies are capable of having a culture.
As the University of St. Andrews cognitive ethologist Andy Whiten also explained to NPR, "If what [animals] learn lasts for a long time, then we might be prepared to call it a tradition. And culture is made up of multiple traditions."
The only downside to this study is that bumblebee colonies only live for about one year. Bridges plans to replicate this study with colonies that last for a longer time to see if her findings reign true.