![]() Foraging bees with a demonstrator opened more puzzle boxes than control bees, and used the same puzzle solution that the demonstrator had been taught 98% of the time, suggesting that they learned the behavior socially rather than stumbling upon a solution themselves. The researchers trained bees to use one of these two solutions and then released these ‘demonstrator’ bees into a foraging arena alongside untrained bees and filmed them over a period of six to twelve days. ![]() The bees could rotate the lid either clockwise or anticlockwise by pushing one of two different colored tabs.īees feeding from a puzzle box opened by pushing the blue tab. ![]() To investigate, researchers tested six colonies of bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris) using a puzzle box that could be opened by rotating a lid to access a sugar solution. ![]() Social animals like primates are skilled at learning by watching others, and previous work has shown that individual bees can learn tasks in this way, but it remained unclear whether these new behaviors would then spread through the colony. Credit: Diego Perez-Lopez, PLOS ( CC-BY 4.0)īees that learned from others were more adept and preferred the learned solution over alternatives.īumblebees learn to solve a puzzle by watching more experienced bees, and this behavioral preference then spreads through the colony, according to a study published on March 7 th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Alice Dorothy Bridges and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Bumblebees can learn by watching a trained bee demonstrating one of two ways to solve puzzle for a sugary reward, then copy the bee to solve the puzzle in the same way.
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