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fullscreen The bumblebee must get to the sugar water in the yellow circle by first pressing two different levers, one blue and one red. When the bumblebee solves that problem, scientists have seen that it can teach other bumblebees how to do it. Photo: Queen Mary University Of London
Bumblebees can learn to solve complex problems from other bumblebees, an ability previously thought to be unique to humans and chimpanzees.
It is British researchers who have seen that bumblebees that learn to solve a problem can then pass the knowledge on to other bumblebees. According to the researchers, this is the first time such behavior has been demonstrated in insects.
In the experiment, the researchers had placed an attractive reward in the form of sugar water behind obstacles. To reach the reward, the bumblebees had to solve a two-step task.
First, the bumblebee had to move a blue lever that blocked a red lever. When they managed to move the red lever, they reached a small bowl of sugar water. This is something that is a real challenge for a bumblebee and to teach them how to do it, the researchers first let them get a separate reward already after the first lever.
After an initial batch of bumblebees learned to get around both obstacles, the researchers paired each trained bumblebee with a bumblebee that had not seen the problem before. They then also removed the first reward.
It turned out that some bumblebees learned how to reach the reward just by watching how the trained mate did.
The study is published in the journal Nature, and according to the researchers, the results point to the fact that bumblebees, like humans, can learn from each other. This is what is called cumulative culture and means that knowledge can be passed on across generations.