Bees may merge their flower memories
Experiments show that colors, patterns signaling treats get mixed up on later visits
Humans may not be the only ones to mix up old memories. Bumblebees seem to do it, too.
Using fake flowers, researchers in London have shown that bumblebees sometimes prefer to visit a flower that combines the colors and patterns of flowers the bees previously visited – even if they’ve never seen the combo flower before. Preferring the novel flowers suggests that the bees are merging memories of what they’ve seen in the past, the researchers report in the March 16 Current Biology. The team argues that it’s the first example of memory merging in a nonhuman animal.