Culture refers to behaviors that are socially learned and persist within a population over time. Increasing evidence suggests that animal culture can, like human culture, be cumulative. However, human cumulative culture involves behaviors so complex that they lie beyond the capacity of any individual to independently discover during their lifetime. New research shows that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) can learn from trained conspecifics to open a novel two-step puzzle box to obtain food rewards, even though they fail to do so independently.
“This groundbreaking research opens new avenues for understanding animal intelligence and the evolution of social learning,” said study senior author Professor Lars Chittka, a researcher at Queen Mary University of London.
“It challenges longstanding assumptions and paves the way for further exploration of the cognitive wonders hidden within the insect world, even hinting at the exciting possibility of cumulative culture amongst seemingly simple creatures.”
Professor Chittka and his colleagues designed a two-step puzzle box requiring bumblebees to perform two distinct actions in sequence to access a sweet reward at the end.
Training bees to do this was no easy task, and bees had to be helped along by the addition of an extra reward along the way.
This temporary reward was eventually taken away, and bees subsequently had to open the whole box before getting their treat.
Surprisingly, while individual bees struggled to solve the puzzle when starting from scratch, those allowed to observe a trained demonstrator bee readily learned the entire sequence — even the first step — while only getting a reward at the end.
The study demonstrates that bumblebees possess a level of social learning previously thought to be exclusive to humans.
They can share and acquire behaviors that are beyond their individual cognitive capabilities: an ability thought to underpin the expansive, complex nature of human culture,…
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