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Scientists have been looking for signs of reason among primates and dolphins for centuries. It is time for insects.
A hundred years ago, psychologist Wolfgang Kohler showed that chimpanzees are able to solve complex problems without step-by-step training. The scientist hung the banana too high for the animal to get the fruit directly. After the pause and inspection of the space, the monkeys folded wooden boxes and climbed up. Experience went down in history as one of the main examples of the site in animals: the solution appeared not through chaotic attempts, but through understanding the relationship between the subject and the goal.
Now a similar problem was solved by the Bombus terrestris earth bumblebees. Researchers from Finland have shown that insects can cope with their own version of Keler’s classical experience. Important detail: bumblebees were not taught in advance to use the subject as a tool for accessing food.
The experiment was conducted by specialists from the University of Oulu, the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku. Bumblebees were placed in a transparent arena, and the blue artificial flower target was transferred to the ceiling. The award was inaccessible from the floor. There was a ball next to it that could be rolled. To get food, the insect had to bring the ball under the suspended flower, climb it and reach the target.
The task was not to learn the trick. Before the test, the bumblebees knew only two separate things: the blue artificial flower is associated with the award, and the ball can be moved. Experience, where both knowledge should be combined into one plan, they did not have. Researchers call such participants naive: insects did not undergo training in combining subjects and did not see a ready-made solution.
Some of the bumblebees independently linked these fragments of experience. Successful individuals did not just roll a ball in the arena and accidentally found themselves under the flower. After the initial wandering of their movements became directed, and the ball moved to the desired point. According to the authors of the work, such trajectories are more like the implementation of the plan than a series of random samples.
Scientists have specifically checked simpler explanations. The insect could have reached for a visible blue target or accidentally push the ball until it was in the right place. To cut off the visual hint, the researchers set a more rigid control experience: the target flower completely hid from the eye. Even without apparent purpose, the bumblebees moved the ball to where the reward was.
The result showed that insects were not limited to a reaction to an irritant in front of the eyes. The bumblebees, who coped with the task, used the internal map of space: remembered the location of the award, took into account the mobility of the ball and used it as a support. For an insect with a tiny brain, such a chain of action looks unexpectedly difficult, because it requires not one conditioned reflex, but a connection of several knowledge in a new context.
The authors compare this experience with the insect version of the problem with bananas and boxes. In both cases, the animal needs to understand that the object can be transferred and used to access an unattainable goal. The difference in scale is huge: chimpanzees has a large brain of primate, and in the bumblebee, the nervous system is much more compact. Therefore, the work strikes the old idea that the spontaneous solution of unfamiliar problems requires a large brain of a vertebral animal.
Over the years, such abilities have been more likely to expect from crows, dolphins, apes and humans. Bumblebees have already come to the attention of cognitive science: studies have shown that bees and related insects can learn to be complex actions, change behavior for task and in some conditions interact with each other. The new experiment adds another layer to this picture: the miniature brain is able not only to remember individual rules, but also to flexibly connect them when faced with a new problem.
Researchers do not claim that bumblebees think like humans or have human consciousness. The work says something else: complex behavior does not always require a huge neural network. The nervous system of the insect can find a non-standard solution if the task forces to combine the memory of the goal, understanding the movement of the object and orientation in space. In experience with a suspended flower, the bumblebee did not just fly to food, but turned the ball into a tool.
For evolutionary biology, the result is important precisely because of the scale of the brain. If a flexible solution is possible in an insect, then nature could come to a complex behavior in different ways, without a mandatory increase in the nervous system to the level of birds, mammals or primates.
A hundred years ago, psychologist Wolfgang Kohler showed that chimpanzees are able to solve complex problems without step-by-step training. The scientist hung the banana too high for the animal to get the fruit directly. After the pause and inspection of the space, the monkeys folded wooden boxes and climbed up. Experience went down in history as one of the main examples of the site in animals: the solution appeared not through chaotic attempts, but through understanding the relationship between the subject and the goal.
Now a similar problem was solved by the Bombus terrestris earth bumblebees. Researchers from Finland have shown that insects can cope with their own version of Keler’s classical experience. Important detail: bumblebees were not taught in advance to use the subject as a tool for accessing food.
The experiment was conducted by specialists from the University of Oulu, the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku. Bumblebees were placed in a transparent arena, and the blue artificial flower target was transferred to the ceiling. The award was inaccessible from the floor. There was a ball next to it that could be rolled. To get food, the insect had to bring the ball under the suspended flower, climb it and reach the target.
The task was not to learn the trick. Before the test, the bumblebees knew only two separate things: the blue artificial flower is associated with the award, and the ball can be moved. Experience, where both knowledge should be combined into one plan, they did not have. Researchers call such participants naive: insects did not undergo training in combining subjects and did not see a ready-made solution.
Some of the bumblebees independently linked these fragments of experience. Successful individuals did not just roll a ball in the arena and accidentally found themselves under the flower. After the initial wandering of their movements became directed, and the ball moved to the desired point. According to the authors of the work, such trajectories are more like the implementation of the plan than a series of random samples.
Scientists have specifically checked simpler explanations. The insect could have reached for a visible blue target or accidentally push the ball until it was in the right place. To cut off the visual hint, the researchers set a more rigid control experience: the target flower completely hid from the eye. Even without apparent purpose, the bumblebees moved the ball to where the reward was.
The result showed that insects were not limited to a reaction to an irritant in front of the eyes. The bumblebees, who coped with the task, used the internal map of space: remembered the location of the award, took into account the mobility of the ball and used it as a support. For an insect with a tiny brain, such a chain of action looks unexpectedly difficult, because it requires not one conditioned reflex, but a connection of several knowledge in a new context.
The authors compare this experience with the insect version of the problem with bananas and boxes. In both cases, the animal needs to understand that the object can be transferred and used to access an unattainable goal. The difference in scale is huge: chimpanzees has a large brain of primate, and in the bumblebee, the nervous system is much more compact. Therefore, the work strikes the old idea that the spontaneous solution of unfamiliar problems requires a large brain of a vertebral animal.
Over the years, such abilities have been more likely to expect from crows, dolphins, apes and humans. Bumblebees have already come to the attention of cognitive science: studies have shown that bees and related insects can learn to be complex actions, change behavior for task and in some conditions interact with each other. The new experiment adds another layer to this picture: the miniature brain is able not only to remember individual rules, but also to flexibly connect them when faced with a new problem.
Researchers do not claim that bumblebees think like humans or have human consciousness. The work says something else: complex behavior does not always require a huge neural network. The nervous system of the insect can find a non-standard solution if the task forces to combine the memory of the goal, understanding the movement of the object and orientation in space. In experience with a suspended flower, the bumblebee did not just fly to food, but turned the ball into a tool.
For evolutionary biology, the result is important precisely because of the scale of the brain. If a flexible solution is possible in an insect, then nature could come to a complex behavior in different ways, without a mandatory increase in the nervous system to the level of birds, mammals or primates.
