Scientists Have Trained Bumblebees to Understand a Form of Morse Code

6 days ago

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Bumblebees can distinguish between patterns of light duration to find food.
This is the first demonstration of bumblebees making foraging decisions based on visual cue duration.
Bumblebees were trained to associate specific light durations with sugary rewards or bitter quinine.
The bees successfully learned and chose the correct light duration even without rewards, showing true learning.
This ability suggests bumblebees can process temporal information, similar to vertebrates.
The study highlights the advanced cognitive abilities of bees, including potential time processing for survival.
The research opens questions about how bees process time and whether it's a fundamental neural capability.
Findings emphasize that complex cognition can exist in very small brains.

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