Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have made the startling discovery that bumblebees can learn to differentiate between long and short light flashes—a simple form of ‘Morse code’—to find food rewards. The study, published in Biology Letters and released on November 12, reveals that the bumblebee Bombus terrestris can make foraging decisions based on visual duration cues, an ability previously documented only in humans and vertebrates like macaques and pigeons.
The research team, led by PhD student Alex Davidson and his supervisor Dr. Elisabetta Versace, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary, designed a special maze to test the insects’ cognitive abilities. In Morse code, a short flash or ‘dot’ denotes the letter ‘E,’ while a long flash or ‘dash’ means ‘T.’ The scientists trained individual bees to associate one duration with a sugar reward and the other with a bitter substance they dislike, reported the Queen Mary University press release.
To ensure the bees weren’t using simple spatial memory, the team changed the position of the ‘dot’ and ‘dash’ stimuli in each trial. After the bees learned which flash duration led to the sweet reward, they were tested with the flashing lights alone—no sugar present.
The results were clear: the majority of bees flew directly to the “correct” flash duration, proving they could distinguish between the temporal cues. “We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn the difference between these different durations, and it was so exciting to see them do it,” said Alex Davidson.
READ ALSO: https://www.modernmechanics24.com/post/russia-su57-opens-weapons-bays
What makes this finding particularly remarkable is that bees don’t naturally encounter such flashing stimuli in their environment. This suggests their time-processing abilities might be an extension of cognitive capacities evolved for other purposes, like tracking movement in space.
“The fact that they could track the duration of visual stimuli might suggest an extension of a time processing capacity that has evolved for different purposes,” Davidson explained. Alternatively, this ability to encode time might be a fundamental property of nervous systems, present even in miniature brains.
The neural mechanisms behind this rapid time-keeping remain mysterious. The well-understood systems for circadian rhythms operate far too slowly to explain how a bee can differentiate between a brief ‘dot’ and a slightly longer ‘dash.’ Scientists have proposed various theories involving single or multiple internal clocks.
WATCH ALSO: https://www.modernmechanics24.com/post/robot-performs-michael-jackson-move
Now, with this proof that insects possess this sophisticated ability, researchers have a powerful new model for study. “Processing durations in insects is evidence of a complex task solution using minimal neural substrate,” noted Dr. Elisabetta Versace. This discovery not only sheds light on the evolution of cognitive abilities across species but could also inspire more efficient artificial intelligence systems designed to mimic biological intelligence’s remarkable efficiency.
