Recent experiments show that bumblebees join a select group of animals – mostly primates and birds – capable of passing on new behaviours by cultural transmission.
The study tested buff-tailed bumblebees’ ability to learn to open sugar-filled containers, a challenge that had two, equally-effective, possible solutions. Inexperienced bees learned the task faster if they’d watched an experienced one complete it first. And the solution eventually adopted by the colony was the same as the one demonstrated initially.
“This result mirrors almost exactly what we see in great tits, chimpanzees and vervet monkeys,” says Alice Bridges of Queen Mary University of London, lead-author of the research paper published in PLOS Biology.
Bumblebees are perhaps unlikely cultural animals. And not only because their brains are only one hundred-thousandth the size of our own. While it’s the workers that learn these new skills, only the queens survive the winter and reproduce. Social learning might aid problem-solving during a colony’s lifespan, but when it dies, all is forgotten.
“It’s really amazing, when you think about it like that, that they’re able to do this at all, because what’s the point?” muses Bridges.
However, such knowledge might be more enduring in other bees, she says. “Many species have multiple generations and multiple queens in the same hive to provide cultural continuity.”
Bridges points to a significant difference between human culture and that demonstrated in her experiments. The bees’ task wasn’t so complicated that individuals couldn’t work it out for themselves eventually. Humans, though, can learn tasks that would be impossible without help. “It’s widely thought to be something only humans can do, although the jury’s still out,” says Bridges.
As for whether bumblebees are more like ourselves than we thought, Bridges believes this risks missing the wood for the trees. “There’s no reason for a bee to be like a human, just like there’s no reason for a human to be like a bee. They live completely different lives; they’ve faced completely different selection pressures. You might as well say a dolphin is just like a horse.”
Main image: Buff-tailed bumblebee © Valter Jacinto/Getty