Smarts in tiny packages :)

Bumblebees figured out how to get to an out-of-reach reward in a new study,
proving they can problem-solve on the fly.

Since the beginning of time, man thought he was the only smart entity on planet earth. Chimps and gorillas were semi included along with, perhaps, whales but that was it. We were the only ones.

Well, this notion is being put the rest in real time as researchers now know crows, parrots and cetaceans are smart as hell and can reason, at a minimum, as well as a 7 year old child.

Photo: Photograph by David Liittschwager

Where we live, crows and ravens use nearly 2,000 miles of inland shoreline as a feeding ground. They dig clams at low tide and use the roadways and traffic to crush the mollusks. The birds dare to take from others what they need and will team up against the larger animals. Gulls, oystercatchers, eagles, otters, and seals are all able to catch and open up what the crows cannot, so crows apply their brains against the others’ brawn with amazing results. As one appears to move with indifference toward the feeding animal, another crow pulls the feeder’s tail. The feeder drops its meal, which the pair of crows seizes and shares.

The primate/whale/elephant construct, along with parrots and other birds, is well documented' 

Over a century ago, the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted what became a classic experiment. He suspended a banana to keep it just out of reach of a chimpanzee, placing a pile of boxes and crates nearby. The chimp soon stacked up the boxes, climbed them and grabbed the treat.

Since Köhler's early work, researchers have conducted similar experiments involving an out-of-reach reward and an object to stand upon in birds and elephants. And both have solved the problem successfully.

This was evidence, Köhler believed, of spontaneous problem solving by the chimpanzee; no training was required. It was the kind of thing that humans do all the time.

But what about bumblebees?

Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Turku in Finland wondered whether bumblebees — short-lived creatures with miniscule brains — might be capable of the same task. And in a paper recently published in the journal Science, he and his colleagues present evidence that they are.

Untrained bumblebees consistently managed to roll a small Styrofoam ball into a position that allowed them to climb atop it to reach a rewarding stimulus overhead.

"I wasn't expecting that high success rate," Loukola says. He concludes that "very tiny brains can solve super complex problems."

After studying bumblebees for about a decade, Loukola has come to expect the unexpected. If you don't have limitations on what's possible for them, he says, "you can go wild and crazy and find completely novel stuff."

His early work proved him right. He showed that bumblebees appeared able to "learn to use tools," he says. "They learn socially from each other; they even understand the role of their partner in cooperative tasks."

Any questions?