Amazing stuff!
"In a new study bumble bees solved a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behaviour especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained. The findings challenge the long-standing assumption that spontaneous problem-solving is restricted to humans and other large-brained vertebrates.
More than 100 years ago, psychologist Wolfgang Köhler famously showed that chimpanzees could solve novel problems by suddenly combining objects in new ways, such as stacking boxes to reach an out-of-reach banana. These experiments became some of the earliest and most influential demonstrations of insight and spontaneous problem-solving in animals.
Now, researchers from the University of Oulu, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Turku report strikingly similar problem-solving abilities in bumble bees. ..."
From the editor's summary and abstract:
"Editor’s summary
Recent research has revealed that bumble bees are much more cognitively advanced than previously thought: They play with balls, count, recognize faces, and even feel rhythm. However, it has not been shown that they could achieve one of the highest peaks of cognitive performance: the ability to spontaneously solve a problem. Bhambore et al. tested this ability by providing bees with a ball that could be used as a tool to reach an otherwise unreachable flower reward. Bees that had been allowed to play with a ball and experience the flower spontaneously learned to move the ball to access the flower when they were present together.
Abstract
Problem-solving using novel solutions without explicit training is often considered a hallmark of cognitive flexibility. We investigated whether bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) could solve a novel object manipulation task spontaneously.
Bees trained to associate a blue ring (“flower”) on the floor with a reward successfully moved a ball underneath a flower relocated to the ceiling to reach the flower. In control experiments in which the flower was out of sight when ball movement began and remained hidden during transport, bees still succeeded in the task. These results suggest that these were goal-directed actions rather than reinforcement-based associations driven by perceptual feedback. Our findings provide evidence that bumble bees can exhibit spontaneous problem-solving, challenging the notion that such advanced cognitive abilities are exclusive to large-brained vertebrates."
Bumble bees show spontaneous problem-solving in study published in Science (original news release)
Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees (no public access)
A bumble bee standing on a ball beneath the artificial flower containing reward, illustrating the experimental solution.
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