How Bees Teach Each Other to Solve Problems
In this article it talks about how scientists constructed experiments that represented behavioral dynamics within a bee population. First, the scientist taught a bee to pull strings to access rewards of nectar to prove that it could learn to solve simple problems. When the bee was later assimilated back with the hive, it remarkably acted as a ‘trainer bee’ that taught it’s problem solving skill to other bees that went to easily solve the same puzzle. The problem solving method was also further spread to other bees – even after the original bee had died. The scientists stated that this experiment was a perfect example of how social learning spreads through a population and even hinted that this could represent a human population dynamic. They completed a second experiment where they placed a single bee within a clear plexiglass container that contained the same problem (pulling strings to obtain nectar) within a larger box containing many other bees. After the lone bee had figured out how to obtain the nectar multiple times, they removed the plexiglass containment and had the larger group of bees attempt the problem. Amazingly, these bees, simply from observation, knew what do to to obtain nectar and succeed nearly 60% of the time! Bee researcher Jason Graham of the University of Hawai’i, stated how the simplicity and refinement of the study was almost a perfect representation of behavioral spread within the human population.
This article relates to class by elaborating on the behavioral dynamic within a networks. It uses quantitative and qualitative research to show behavior dispersal through bumble bee populations. The researchers even closely related it to how behavior spreads through a human population. As a follow up to this study, I would like to know how different types of bees would respond to the same problem solving scenarios? Is it only limited to bumble bees?
Link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/bees-learn-by-watching-each-other-bumblebees/
nice post!