Amazing stuff!
"... This phenomenon, known as affective contagion, had previously been demonstrated in a variety of social animals—but only ones with bones. Meanwhile, wee bumblebees have demonstrated remarkable cognitive complexity, including different emotional states, learning by watching, and even a penchant for play. So, researchers wondered if these bees might similarly pick up on their hive members’ vibes.
They trained bees to associate certain colored flowers with a food reward, then put some of them in a good mood by giving them an extra sugary treat. The bees that received this yummy bonus more readily landed on ambiguously colored flowers, indicating they were feeling optimistic about getting a treat. But so, too, did bees that simply observed their fellow insects excitedly rushing towards these flowers. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Being able to adopt a knowledgeable conspecific’s perspective is highly adaptive. Likely for this reason, emotional contagion, or the spread of emotion from one individual to another, is widely distributed among vertebrates. Such an ability, however, would also be adaptive in nonvertebrates, especially those that are social. Whether insect brains are capable of such coordination has been unknown. Romero-González et al. looked at this behavior in bumble bees, whose tiny, but seemingly mighty, brains have already been shown capable of many unexpected cognitive feats. They found that a demonstrator’s positive attitude toward the potential for a reward was readily picked up by an observer. ...
Abstract
Affective contagion, a core component of empathy, has been widely characterized in social vertebrates but its existence in any invertebrate is unknown. Using a cognitive bias paradigm we demonstrate positive affective contagion in bumble bees.
After being trained on colored flowers with different reinforcements, bees that interacted with a conspecific in a positive affective state were quicker and more likely than controls to land on ambiguous colored flowers, indicating the transfer of a positive judgment bias between bees.
Additional observations and experiments showed that affect could be transmitted between bees without physical contact, i.e., through visual modality alone. Our findings suggest that affective contagion may be an evolutionarily widespread mechanism present in both social vertebrates and social insects."
Positive affective contagion in bumble bees (no public access)
The Bee Lab At Southern Medical University, China
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