While we all recognize bees for their importance in our food chain as pollinators, these creatures have a range of other talents, including the ability to recognize faces and even use tools.
A new video, originally posted on Twitter, shows a pair of bees apparently unscrewing the orange cap of a soft drink can, to get to the sugary liquid inside. And in today’s age of digital deception, we have to keep in mind that this could just be a clever CGI program; Or maybe the bees really worked together, but they simply dropped an already loose bottle cap .
https://twitter.com/JeffreyMarlowe/status/1397136417197858820?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1397136417197858820%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Farabic.rt.com%2Ffunny%2F1236021-D988D8B3D8B7-D8B4D983D988D983-D985D8B1D98AD8A8D8A9-D981D98AD8AFD98AD988-D984D8A7-D98AD8B5D8AFD982-D984D8B2D988D8AC-D985D986-D8A7D984D986D8ADD984-D98AD8B9D985D984D8A7D986-D985D8B9D8A7-D984D981D8AAD8AD-D8B2D8ACD8A7D8ACD8A9-D8B5D988D8AFD8A7-D98AD8ACD8B0D8A8-D8A7D984D985D984D8A7D98AD98AD986%2F
Either way, it’s fun to think about whether bees have the brains to make such a steal of soda.
This is amazing.
I forget where I read it, but I recently saw the question posed "can cells make decisions and change their minds". The article related to amoeba behavior.
It is really profound to contemplate the origins and commonality of thought inherent in all life.
— Hvaldimir #StandWithUkraine #GuerrillaGardener (@Hvaldimir1) May 25, 2021
According to ViralHog, the licensor of the video that acquired the footage, the amazing moment was captured in São Paulo, Brazil, by a worker during a lunch break.
“I got a soft drink from an agent, but the bees quickly stole it,” she wrote in the caption.
The fluid skill with which these two bees seem to wrap the cap of a soda bottle has baffled many on the Internet, with some wondering how such intelligence could be found in what appears to be a very small brain.
And as we’ve learned in recent years, animal head size isn’t everything. For one thing, small animals have a much lower body mass to be governed by brain cells, so naturally they’ll need smaller brains. In addition, the complexity of connections between neurons could be even more important for cognitive performance.
And in 1962, a decade before he won the Nobel Prize for research into bee communication, Carl von Frisch announced that bumblebees had brains too small to be able to think, putting their genius nature all in their solid instinct. Since then, the control ability of the bee’s brain has been repeatedly tested.
And bees have proven surprisingly intelligent in recent research. Not only can these insects learn from each other and use tools, they can also perform basic mathematical equations.
Clearly, von Frisch’s big-brain bias is still with us today. While the zoologist admitted that bees can “achieve amazing intellectual feats”, he claimed that he did so only out of instinct, and failed “when suddenly faced with unfamiliar tasks”.
The bees were probably lucky this time, discovering a sweet reward that prompted them to roam somewhat blindly against a slight resistance.
On the other hand, nature can surprise us. In the bee’s stacked brain, for example, a single neuron can sometimes connect to as many as 100,000 other cells.
In recent research, bumblebees were trained to roll a ball to a target for a reward. To score, the insects needed to imitate each other’s movements and learn from their mistakes, which they can do with surprising ease.
“The use of these tools was at one time attributed to only humans, but then to primates, marine mammals, and then birds,” researchers wrote in 2017. “We now recognize that many species have the ability to visualize how a particular organism is used to an end.”
Even with their small nerve circuits, bees may be able to do more than we previously thought. And the next time you treat yourself to an al fresco lunch, you might want to “guard” your drink.
Source: Science Alert