UNCOVERING BEE INTELLIGENCE

Let’s start with obvious. How does one determine animal intelligence?

One way is designing tests that objectively assess their mental skills without raising the spectre of anthropomorphism. The animals also have to be carefully trained to perform those tests. These difficulties mean that researchers mostly resort to small experiments with just one species.

This makes it very hard to compare species or pool the results of separate studies.

In the 1950s Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget performed an intelligence experiment by repeatedly put a toy under a box in front of some infants, and then moved it to a second box. He found that babies under 10 months of age would keep on searching under Box A, despite what they had seen. They couldn’t resist their old habit to do something flexible and different; that ability only kicks in around our first birthday. MacLean, Hare and Nunn’s team gave this “A-not-B” test to their animals, using food rather than a toy.

Encephalization quotient (EQ) this term refers to estimating animal intelligence by comparing an animal’s brain to that of a typical creature of the same size. Various studies show animals’ scores correlate with the absolute but not relative sizes of their brains. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether the animals’ brains were big for their size, but whether they were big, full-stop.

Absolute brain size refers to the actual physical size of an animal’s brain, without considering the size of its body. In simple terms, it asks, “How big is the brain, period?” For example, an Elephant has a very large brain, while a Mouse has a very small one. Relative brain size, on the other hand, compares the size of the brain to the size of the animal’s body. It asks, “How big is the brain compared to the body?” A Human, for instance, has a brain that is large relative to its body size, whereas a whale may have a much larger brain in absolute terms, but this brain is smaller when considered in proportion to its enormous body.

The statement means that animals’ performance on cognitive tests is linked to the total size of their brains rather than how large those brains are relative to their bodies. In other words, animals with bigger brains overall tend to score higher, regardless of whether their brain is considered large for their body size.

THE BEE WORLD

There are over 20,000 species of bees and unlike popular belief not all build nests above ground or live in groups. Some are solitary.

TYPES OF NESTS

• Architects: Build above ground nest using plant materials, pebbles and binding them using resin or saliva.

• Carpenters: Bore into stems and animal dung.

• Renters: Take refuge in existing spaces e. g wall cracks, shell, or abandoned insect nest.

NOT YOUR TYPICAL BEES

·        Emerald comb bearer bee: Nests underground in tunnels six feet deep

·        Broad cheeked nocturnal sweat bee: Large light sensitive eyes to forage at night.

·        Underground vulture bee: Gathers dead flesh to feed its offspring.

·        Waroona cuckoo bee: Lays eggs in other insects’ nests when host is not around.

·        Lisotrigona furva: Sips animal tears as a source of protein.

BEE BRAIN

A grass seed. Yes, that is how big the brain of a bee is. If we apply EQ (Encephalization quotient), then a bee would be expected to have limited cognitive ability, because its brain is so small. Even if the bee’s brain might be large relative to its body, that relative size doesn’t matter much. Lets look at some studies that go against this and show the remarkable cognitive ability of these small but highly important creatures.

1)Bees Can Count

Behavioral ecologist Lars Chirttka and his friends constructed a row of identical tent shaped objects to act as landmarks to guide a colony of honey bees going to there hive. TBut the next day, they constructed a row of identical, tent-shaped objects to act as landmarks for a colony of honeybees going back and forth to their hive. They placed a feeder filled with sugar water, to mimic nectar, between the third and fourth landmarks. Once the bees were familiar with the location of the feeder, they varied the tents’ positions. The bees, however, still searched for the feeder after the third tent. They seemed to count the number of landmarks they passed on their way to the feeder.

These unexpected abilities may stem from the unpredictable world that bees must negotiate. Bees must search across vast areas to locate the sweetest blooms, remember where they are, and, as they fly and perform cost-benefit analyses to determine whether the energy required to reach a sweeter flower is worth traveling the extra distance from the hive. They also must find water, dodge predators, and navigate a shifting compass of sun and sky. Social bees communicate that information to their sisters; solitary bees bear the additional burden alone.

2)Bees Can Recognize Cause and Effect

At a department meeting a decade ago, one of his colleagues lamented that the parrots in his lab had failed a string-pulling test—a classic experiment used to evaluate cognitive prowess in primates, dogs, and various bird species, in which an animal learns to pull a string to retrieve an otherwise inaccessible reward.

His team placed an artificial flower—a blue dot filled with a sucrose solution—under a low transparent plastic barrier so the bees could see but not reach the reward. Instead, they were shown step-by-step how to pull the flower closer using the attached string. Shortly after the experiment’s design was finalized, one of Chittka’s students called him in to the lab. The bumblebees had quickly figured out how to pull it to them.

The team decided to expand the classic framework by bringing untrained bees to watch demonstrator bees pull the string. The observers learned the task as well, and soon those bees were showing other foragers in the colony how to do it too. The experiment suggested that bees can recognize cause and effect—how pulling a string can produce a reward—and engage in social learning.

CONCLUSCION

Behavioral experiments reveals that the Bee is capable of counting, problem-solving, understanding cause and effect, and even learning socially. These findings suggest that intelligence is not solely determined by sheer brain volume, but also by how efficiently neural systems are organized and adapted to an organism’s environment. Ultimately, bees demonstrate that even a brain no larger than a grass seed can support surprisingly sophisticated behavior, urging us to rethink what it truly means to be intelligent in the natural world.