Dot… dash… dot… dash… buzz?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Humans can use morse code. What about bees?
Alexander Davidson and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London put bumblebees to the test.
They showed forty bumblebees flashing yellow circles. A short flash of one second or less was paired with sugar water. A longer flash between three to five seconds was paired with salt water. For half of the group, it was the other way around.
Quickly, all the bees learned to only respond to the flash with good food! This tells us that bees can learn from just visual cues.
Can you bee-lieve it? Bees are even smarter than we think!
Reference: Davidson, A., Nanda, I., Ong, A., Chittka, L., & Versace, E. (2025). Duration discrimination in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. Biology Letters, 21(11), 20250440. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0440