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posted by cmn32480 on Monday February 27 2017, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the honey-that-is-un-bee-lievable dept.

Even tiny brains can learn strange and tricky stuff, especially by watching tiny experts.

Buff-tailed bumblebees got several chances to watch a trained bee roll a ball to a goal. These observers then quickly mastered the unusual task themselves when given a chance, researchers report in the Feb. 24 Science. And most of the newcomers even improved on the goal-sinking by taking a shortcut demo-bees hadn't used, says behavioral ecologist Olli Loukola at Queen Mary University of London.

Learning abilities of animals without big vertebrate brains often get severely underestimated, Loukola says. "The idea that small brains constrain insects is kind of wrong, or old-fashioned."

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/score-bumblebees-football-insect-social-learning


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 27 2017, @05:18PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 27 2017, @05:18PM (#472378) Journal

    "really small rural white males"

    LMAO - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy [wikipedia.org]

    This link attempts to establish that there are about 4.5 worker bees (females) for each drone (males) - and of course, the queen is female as well. Bees are mostly female, and the males pretty much only serve one purpose in life. Serving the queen is what they are all about.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 27 2017, @07:14PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 27 2017, @07:14PM (#472455)

    A white male assuming the gender identity of a persecuted migrant minority in the current year; who ever would have guessed. Its not our place to judge, they can identify as little apache attack helicopters and pollinate whatever feels good. And WRT group politics, the queen of the hive is Not My President (tm).