Bumblebees Exhibit Advanced Social Learning, Study Shows

Recent research reveals bumblebees can learn complex tasks through social observation, challenging previous beliefs about animal cognition.

Bumblebees can learn to solve complex puzzles and then teach the technique to their hive mates, demonstrating advanced social intelligence.
The study, conducted by Queen Mary University of London, involved training bumblebees to perform a multi-step task to access a sugary reward.
Researchers found that untrained bees could learn the entire sequence by observing trained bees, even without experiencing the initial steps' rewards.
This ability to share and acquire behaviors through social learning suggests bumblebees possess cognitive capabilities previously thought unique to humans.
The findings open new avenues for understanding the emergence of cumulative culture in the animal kingdom and challenge long-standing assumptions about animal intelligence.