Bumblebees spread behavior through social learning
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Bumblebees can teach each other how to solve puzzle boxes, preferring to be taught by their sisters rather than learning on their own. This adds evidence that these insects are capable of social learning and use it to share tendencies and maintain culture over the long term.
The researchers found 10 colonies of bumblebees (ground bomb) You had to solve a puzzle box to access the sweet solution inside. There are two possible solutions. Push the red lever clockwise or push the blue lever counterclockwise. Each colony had a designated demonstrator bee who was personally taught one of two ways to open boxes by a human trainer. All got the chance to crack the sweet goodness code for 3 hours each day over a period of 6-12 days.
Bees used tricks taught to them by their colony mates more than 98% of the time. “Even when we found easy alternatives, we went back to proven behavior,” says Alice Bridges of Queen Mary University of London. “It was really crazy.”
In colonies where bees were not taught how to solve puzzles by humans, insects opened the box only a few times.
These results suggest that bumblebee collective behavior spreads through social learning and, like cultural trends, may be maintained over time. “That’s exactly what we mean when we talk about the transmission of cultures in animal communities,” says Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews, UK.
Claudio Tenney of the University of Tübingen, Germany, says these findings do an extraordinary job of revealing cultural learning in insects. says.
In these experiments, the bees conveyed information in the lever-pressing ‘know-what’ domain and the lever-pressing ‘know-where’ domain. But they don’t necessarily share more complex information about their “know-how,” such as the series of multiple actions they perform with levers, Tennie says. “They just land and shove like Lombok,” he says. “I call these things minimal culture.”
Even minimal forms of social learning can serve as buffers against global warming and other common challenges. If you can learn new behaviors to overcome problems instead of just waiting, that’s really beneficial for you,” says Bridges.
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