Overview
- Researchers at Queen Mary University of London, with Nanyang Technological University collaborators, trained Bombus terrestris to associate short versus long flashes with sugar or a bitter quinine solution.
- Bees continued to choose the previously rewarded duration when all rewards were removed, confirming that decisions were driven by timing rather than scent or residual cues.
- Positions of the flashing stimuli were randomized and total light output was matched in tests, ruling out spatial and brightness cues as explanations for performance.
- The study tested 41 individuals across two main experiments, including comparisons such as roughly 0.5‑second versus 2.5‑second flashes, and found reliable duration discrimination regardless of which duration was rewarded.
- The findings extend dot‑and‑dash–style duration discrimination to insects for the first time and open inquiries into the neural basis of sub‑second timing, with potential inspiration for efficient artificial neural networks.