In the early morning of March 7, Beijing time, the internationally renowned academic journal "Nature" recently published a research paper on animal behavior that believes that bumblebees (insects of the genus Bombus in the order Hymenoptera, family Apidae) can teach each other new behaviors that are extremely complex and cannot be learned alone - Using sugar as a reward teaches a bee to solve a puzzle, and it will go on to train other bees to complete the task.

　　The findings of this study provide evidence that bees can socially learn behaviors of a certain complexity, an ability previously thought to be unique to humans.

　　The paper introduces that the behaviors acquired and perpetuated through social learning are called culture.

There is growing evidence that, like human culture, animal culture can be cumulative, in which subsequent behavior builds on previous behavior.

The process of human accumulation of culture involves behaviors that are extremely complex and that no individual can independently discover in a lifetime.

Bumblebees are social insects and are known to be able to master unnatural behaviors such as pulling a rope or rolling a ball through social learning in order to obtain rewards.

　　Based on this, Alice D. Bridges, the first author and co-corresponding author of the paper, University of Sheffield, UK, and colleagues and collaborators set up a puzzle box task to study whether bumblebees can learn more complex behaviors from other members of the colony.

　　They designed a two-step puzzle box in which bumblebees had to first remove an obstacle, allowing a twist-top lid to open, revealing a sucrose solution reward.

Untrained bumblebees are unable to solve puzzles independently through trial and error.

In practice, it takes about two days to train a demonstration bee to complete the task, often requiring a reward at the first step.

But untrained bees learned to open the two-step puzzle box from the demonstration bee without receiving a reward after the first step.

　　The authors of the paper concluded that the findings of this study provide evidence that bumblebees are capable of social learning and may have the ability to pass on culture.

Queen Mary University of London also produced and provided a video to demonstrate and popularize the latest research.

(The video of Liu Peng produced by reporter Sun Zifa is from Springer Nature)

Editor in charge: [Luo Pan]