[LINK] "Watch How Bees Teach Each Other to Solve Problems"
National Geographic's Brian Clark Howard describes a new study that demonstrates how bees, that epitome of a swarm intelligence, learn.
Bee see, bee do. At least that's the conclusion of research published earlier this month, showing that bumblebees learn to solve problems by watching each other.
In the first study of its kind in insects, scientists constructed experiments that challenged bees to pull strings in order to access rewards of nectar. It's a technique that has long been used to test cognition in various vertebrates, but hadn't yet been tried with insects.
[. . .]
The first step was proving that bees could learn to solve a simple problem. But what's more interesting is that other bees that hadn't encountered the problem before picked up the ability to solve it more quickly when they had a chance to watch a trainer bee that had already figured out the puzzle.
Further, that knowledge was shown to spread from bee to bee throughout a colony, even if the first bee that figured out the trick died.
The scientists hoped their study would shed light on a bigger picture: how social learning spreads through a population. That might even have implications for the evolutionary roots of culture in human beings, they noted.
The study in question is available here.
Bee see, bee do. At least that's the conclusion of research published earlier this month, showing that bumblebees learn to solve problems by watching each other.
In the first study of its kind in insects, scientists constructed experiments that challenged bees to pull strings in order to access rewards of nectar. It's a technique that has long been used to test cognition in various vertebrates, but hadn't yet been tried with insects.
[. . .]
The first step was proving that bees could learn to solve a simple problem. But what's more interesting is that other bees that hadn't encountered the problem before picked up the ability to solve it more quickly when they had a chance to watch a trainer bee that had already figured out the puzzle.
Further, that knowledge was shown to spread from bee to bee throughout a colony, even if the first bee that figured out the trick died.
The scientists hoped their study would shed light on a bigger picture: how social learning spreads through a population. That might even have implications for the evolutionary roots of culture in human beings, they noted.
The study in question is available here.