Overview
- A University of Oulu study published in Science on Thursday, June 4, 2026, found that buff‑tailed bumblebees that had been pre‑exposed only to a movable ball and a blue food cue repeatedly rolled the ball under an out‑of‑reach artificial flower and climbed on it to get a sugar reward.
- Researchers ran stricter controls to rule out accidental success, including barriers, multiple openings, and separated compartments, and still reported high success rates such as 16 of 22 and 23 of 30 bees with roughly 70–75 percent success among pre‑exposed groups.
- The team cautions that arena size and camera placement prevented fine‑grained measures like gaze or posture tracking, and they noted a few individuals gained the reward by alternative means (hanging from the ceiling) that were not counted as task success.
- Authors and outside experts say the findings imply flexible, goal‑directed behavior can arise in insect brains of about one million neurons, prompting debate over terms like "insight" and whether this counts as tool use.
- The researchers plan follow‑up work using slow‑motion behavioral analysis and physiological monitoring to test causal understanding and to probe how these problem‑solving behaviors operate and evolve.