FLICKR, PENNY METAL
Buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) can learn to dribble a ball to a target for a sugary reward, researchers reported last week (February 24) in Science. To see whether the bees could learn a task they would not encounter in the wild, a group of biologists at the Queen Mary University of London stuck a plastic bee on transparent stick and moved it across a platform toward a marked location where a drop of sugar water appeared, while the real critters watched. After seeing this demonstration several times, the bees were able to complete this task on their own.
Then, to investigate how the bees were learning, the team separated the insects into three groups: one that observed trained bees, another that watched a “floating” ball ...
