Bumblebees Demonstrate Surprising Time-Keeping Abilities

In a groundbreaking discovery, researchers have found that bumblebees can process the duration of light flashes and use this information to decide where to look for food. This is the first evidence of such an ability in insects, challenging the long-standing belief that they are merely "reflex machines" without flexibility.

The study, conducted by doctoral student Alex Davidson and senior lecturer Elisabetta Versace from Queen Mary University of London, set up a maze where bees encountered two visual cues - one with a short flash of light and another with a long flash. The bees learned to associate the short flash with a sweet food reward and the long flash with a bitter food, demonstrating their ability to differentiate the duration of the flashes.

Versace noted that this finding is "really remarkable," as it shows bees can use novel stimuli they have never encountered before to solve tasks in a flexible way. The researchers plan to further investigate the neural mechanisms behind the bees' time-keeping abilities and how this skill varies among individual bees.

The study's results suggest bees possess complex cognition and inner lives, contrary to the perception of them as simple pollinators. As Davidson explained, "They are not just machines for our purposes." The findings also raise intriguing questions about the nature of time perception in the animal kingdom.