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