And now, thanks to some of Perry's research published this week in PLOS Biology, we now know bees can also learn new skills just by watching other bees. Perry and his team figured this out by first teaching bumblebees a new skill that they wouldn't naturally learn in the wild: pulling a string to free a disc from under a plexiglass covered in order to access the nectar inside. [...]
It was already pretty cool that bees were able to master this tricky (for them) skill, but what was really remarkable was the bees' ability to pass this knowledge on to the rest of the hive. This was accomplished in two methods. In one, an "observer" bee was placed in a small chamber near an actively foraging trained bee, and would watch the trained bee performing the task over and over. After watching the task just ten times, the student bees were released and 60 percent were able to solve the puzzle within five minutes. [...]
"The decline around the world, of both honeybees and bumble bees and pollinators in general, is a serious concern," Perry said. "One of our hopes is that people will have a different perspective on bees and insects. They're more than just behaviorally rigid machines. They do have these complex cognitive capacities, and maybe this can help our conservation efforts because people will view them more as individuals with memories and preferences, and not just nuisances."
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