Scientists have found that only a handful of species, such as humans, apes, dolphins and some fish, can learn about an object with one sense and later identify it with another. Now, the bumblebee.
LESLIE NEMO: ‘Scientists have found that only a handful of species, such as humans, apes, dolphins and some fish, can learn about an object with one sense and later identify it with another… Enter the bumblebee. These striped pollen collectors are some of the most-studied insects when it comes to cognition, primarily because they seem to have the most impressive mental skills… Thanks to a new study published in the journal Science, researchers can add bumblebees to that short list of savvy sensors…
Bumblebees have the smallest brain yet of any animal found to possess this mental skill — a discovery that brings researchers closer to understanding what a brain needs to pull off a sensory switcheroo… “Studying [this] in bees with a brain the size of a sesame seed gives us a good opportunity to see how much cognition and intelligence can fit into that small of a brain, but also what is needed for it to occur,” says study co-author Cwyn Solvi, a cognition researcher at Queen Mary University of London and Macquarie University in Australia…
The team doesn’t know of any situations in the wild where bumblebees might rely on one sense to make up for another. Other lab experiments show, however, that if asked to forage among flowers in a dark lab, bumblebees will do it… If it turns out other insects have this skill, then this particular mental capacity might date back millennia, Solvi says. Though that sounds surprising, “our study suggests there’s a lot more going on than we give bees credit for,” she notes’. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: