Tiny Brains, Big Brain Power
What do you do when you need something from the top of a towering bookcase or a high cabinet? Most people grab a chair or a step stool. Scientists recently challenged bumblebees with a similar problem. Instead of reaching for furniture, the insects had to figure out how to use a small foam ball to reach a flower hanging above them.
The results surprised researchers and could change how scientists think about what tiny brains are capable of.
A New Kind of Puzzle
Scientists have known for years that bees can learn. In a 2017 study in Science, “Bumblebees Show Cognitive Flexibility by Improving on an Observed Complex Behavior,” researcher Olli Loukola and his team from the University of Turku in Finland, taught bumblebees to roll small balls to a target. They learned by watching another bee do it first. Some of the bees even found a more efficient way to solve the problem than the one they observed.
The new study, “Spontaneous Problem-Solving in Bumble Bees,” also published in Science, came from some of the same researchers. This time, instead of teaching the bees what to do, they wanted to know whether the insects could solve a completely new problem on their own.
To test this, the team placed an artificial flower on the low ceiling of a small area. The bees could see the flower, but the space was too short for them to hover beneath it, leaving them to find another way to reach it.
The only object available was a small foam ball on the floor. Many bees rolled the ball under the flower, climbed onto it, and reached the flower without being shown how to complete the task. The researchers then made the challenge harder by adding barriers and rearranging the area. Still, many of the bees solved the puzzle.
More Than Instinct?
Scientists often give animals "out-of-reach" puzzles to see how they solve problems. Chimpanzees, crows, and elephants have all completed similar challenges. Because bees have tiny brains, many researchers thought they relied mostly on instinct. This study suggests that bumblebees can also solve new problems in flexible ways.
The researchers also watched how the bees behaved while solving the puzzles. They noticed that the bees that spent more time checking the space under the flower before moving the ball were more likely to succeed. This suggests they were working toward a goal rather than simply moving the ball by chance.
Scientists aren’t ready to claim that bees can think like humans. However, the study shows that complex problem-solving doesn’t need a big brain. A bumblebee with a brain about the size of a poppy seed can solve problems in ways that continue to surprise scientists.
Sierra McConnell is a Thermo Fisher Scientific staff writer.
Discussion Questions
- Why do you think scientists test animals with puzzles they would not normally encounter in nature?
- How did this experiment help researchers tell the difference between instinct and problem solving?
- What are some other ways scientists could test the intelligence of insects without using words or language?