16 January 2014
Could bees be more intelligent than we think? We’ve
been hearing about a lot discoveries in the area of animal intelligence. However,
it’s one thing to speculate about the intelligence of birds and even octopuses,
but insects?
Well, at least one group of scientists has tried to “look
into” the question. I say “look into” because, with insects, it’s
difficult to come up with anything even remotely resembling a standardized
test. So, the researchers began by biting off a piece that scientific
testing “could chew”: Do bees have individual personalities?
A research team at the Queen Mary
University of London designed an experiment in which they observed the
foraging preferences of bumblebees. However, the experiment was not
designed to test the general foraging preferences of the bees, as a group, but
the individual preferences of the individual bees. In other words,
let’s look past the swarm and ask: what’s on the mind of “the lone bee in the
crowd”?
The team of researchers, Helene Muller, Heiko Grossmann, and
Lars Chittka, released bumblebees into an enclosed space with artificial
flowers of different colors. The idea was to see if individual bees had
their own individual favorite colors. Do some bees prefer one color while
some of their peers prefer other colors? The researchers measured
how quickly individual bees approached flowers of a certain color, and how long
individual bees stayed at flowers of a certain color.
In a paper published in Animal Behavior,
the team reported finding no difference among the individual bees’ observed
“preferences.” The result suggests that bumblebees do not have individual
personalities. Of course, this doesn’t end the investigation.
There may be future studies with other tests based on other criteria.
But, for now, if you’re in advertising and bumblebees compose your target
market, it makes no difference what colors your product comes in.
One interesting aspect of the experiment or, perhaps,
interesting aspect of bee species, themselves, is the difference between the
hive-less loner — the bumblebee – and its more social cousin — the honey bee.
All bees are social, but bumblebees live in relatively small groups in
nests, which are abandoned and rebuilt in another location on a yearly
basis. These bees tend to forage for food alone. In contrast,
honeybees live in densely populated hives, which will remain their home from
birth to death. Honeybees travel and forage for food in swarms.
What difference does sociability make? Well, maybe
none. However, the development of human intelligence has long been
attributed to the necessity for social interaction. In other words,
because humans developed social groups in order to survive, they were compelled
to develop intelligence in order to interact with other members of the group.
If the relationship between intelligence and social
interaction were the rule, the loner bumblebee subjects of this latest study
would be the “less intelligent” species when compared to their more social
cousins, the honeybees. So, maybe the colored flower test should be performed
on the honeybees because these bees are more social. That means they
must be more intelligent. Right? Well, maybe it’s not that simple.
Perhaps, human intelligence did develop in response to
social interaction with the result that human researchers assume that this is
the only way intelligence could develop. The social interaction “rule”
has been seriously challenged by the high levels of intelligence displayed by
one of the most unsocial animals on earth: the octopus.
Octopuses have virtually no social interactions with members
of their own species. These creatures, literally, meet their peers only
briefly to eat them or mate with them. Both process result in the death
of either one or both of the guests at the party. (With octopuses, mating
is followed by the swift death of both participants.) That’s the social
life of the octopus. Period.
Perhaps, just because human intelligence developed out of
the necessity for social interaction, human researchers have a built-in
prejudice in favor of social intelligence. And, perhaps, it was just this
prejudice that blinded human researchers to the clear displays of octopus
intelligence – at least until relatively recently.
What got the unsocial octopus noticed? Its use of
tools. The octopus displays an amazing repertoire of tool selection,
retention, and use and, also, displays a remarkable ingenuity in its
interactions with its inanimate environment. So, social intelligence
certainly isn’t the only type of intelligence.
Given the amazing intelligence of the loner octopus,
perhaps, the more intelligent bee species would be the (relatively) lone
bumblebee. Forced to develop its individual initiative through ages
of lone-foraging, perhaps, the bumblebee has developed a resourceful
intelligence. But is intelligence the same as personality?
While no one knows the answer to these interesting
questions, the “The
Best Bees Company” added some interesting suggestions based on their
own interactions with bees and bee keepers.
In their experience, different hives seemed to have
different “personalities.” The honeybees of one hive “hoarded” pollen –
gathering and storing it in large quantities. But the bees of another
hive seemed to prefer gathering and storing more honey in preference to
pollen. While noting that these and other differences could be
attributable to different environments, or even genetics, the authors make an
interesting suggestion with an added question.
Could individual hives, rather than individual bees, develop
personalities? As the authors put it, could there be a “personality”
distinct to each hive’s “social super organism?”
From yet another angle, could the “whole” be more than the
sum of the “parts.” That is, could the “whole,” a hive or swarm,
consistently develop and display particular behavior patterns distinct from
other hives and swarms. In contrast, could the “parts,” alone, the
individual bees, display no apparent individual behaviors?
Well, all of these are interesting questions.
Experienced observation together with the earliest research
predictably seems to provide many more questions than answers. At this
point, the puzzle boils down to a simple question. Are bees (and all insects) are,
intellectually, “little robots” or “thinking beings?”
M Grossmann of Hazelwood, Missouri & Belleville,
Illinois
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