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Bumblebees See How to Sink Ball in Goal, Then Do It Better

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

charon writes:

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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Original Submission

• Or other animals Or other animals (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Monday February 27 2017, @07:06PM (3 children)

  by TheLink (332) on Monday February 27 2017, @07:06PM (#472450) Journal

  If brain size mattered that much why are crows and parrots with walnut sized brains so smart? There are animals with much bigger brains that aren't much smarter than crows, ravens or parrots.
  
  I'm no neuroscientist or biologist but my hypothesis is that when brains first evolved they weren't really for solving the problem of thinking. Many single celled creatures already did similar levels of thinking compared to multicellular creatures of that era. What brains solved was the problem of controlling a multicellular creature. You can't just have a single neuron hooked up to everything and controlling it. No redundancy- if that neuron died the whole organism would be wasted.

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• Re:Or other animals (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @07:20PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @07:20PM (#472457)

  Its brain-size relative to body size that predicts intelligence.

  My theory is that every gram of body-weight needs X number of neurons to maintain. So once a species exceeds that ratio its got neurons for other stuff like problem solving.

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• Re:Or other animals Re:Or other animals (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 27 2017, @08:06PM (1 child)

  by DannyB (5839) on Monday February 27 2017, @08:06PM (#472497) Journal

  Crows and Parrots may seem smart, as you suggest. But can they tweet?

  Can they re-tweet?

  Can they click Like? Follow? Subscribe? Thumbs Up?

  --
  The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.

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  • Re:Or other animals (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @08:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @08:45PM (#472514)

    Crows and Parrots may seem smart, as you suggest. But can they tweet?

    Well, you are talking about birds...

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