Buzz, dot, dot, dash

BEES LEARN TO READ MORSE CODE

We may already know about some forms of bee communication such as 'the waggle dance' and how they can work together to solve puzzles, but now behavioural scientists at Queen Mary University of London have found that bumblebees can decipher a form of morse code - judging dot-like and dash-like flashes to find food. The Buff-tailed bumble bees were able to discriminate between different visual timings to learn over a period of time which signals meant sugar water or bitter water.

The research team, led by PhD student Alex Davidson along with Dr Elisabetta Versace, built a maze fitted with two circles that emitted long or short flashes. Davidson said, "We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn the difference between different durations, and it was so exciting to see them do it." He was surprised that they succeeded as bees don't encounter flashing stimuli in their natural environment.

As bees' brains are tiny, yet the handled a task that demands precise timing, showing complex cognitive processes, it raises further questions. It suggests that bees can process temporal information and have a built-in sense of time, a trait once thought unique to humans and certain vertebrates. Versace said "Many complex animal behaviours, such as navigation and communication, depend on time processing abilities," and she noted that a wider comparison across species will help explain how these abilities evolve. The study also shows that there is so much that we still don't know about the creatures with which we share our home.

You can read the full study, published in the journal 'Biology Letters' HERE.