Overview

• 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.