Even though bees are important in the food chain as pollinators, they have a number of other skills, including face recognition, and even tool use.
There is a video that shows a pair of bees trying to open the lid of a drink.
In today's age of digital trickery, we have to be careful that this could be clever and that the bees really did work together.
It's fun to think if bees could pull off such a robbery.
The moment was caught by a worker on their lunch break in So Paolo, Brazil.
The person wrote in the caption that the bees stole the soda from the customer.
The smooth skill with which these two bees seem to twist the lid off a soda bottle baffled many on the internet, with some wondering how such intelligence exists in what is obviously a very small brain.
What kind of intelligence exists in such a tiny brain, how do they know it has to be twisted anti clockwise. ?
— Jeffrey Marlowe (@JeffreyMarlowe) May 25, 2021
I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it and I'm still not sure I believe it! 🤔
— Brian B. (@brian163t) May 25, 2021
The size of an animal's noggin is not everything.
Smaller brains are needed because tiny animals have less body mass for brain cells. It is possible that the complexity of connections between neurons is more important for cognitive performance.
bumblebees were declared too small-brained to think by Karl von Frisch in 1962, a decade before the prize was awarded for research on bee communication.
The question of how much a bee's brain can handle has been tested many times.
Despite having a noggin the size of a grass seed, bees have proved to be very smart.
These insects can learn from each other and can perform basic mathematical equations.
How would a small calculator be able to solve problems like removing a cap from a bottle?
von Frisch had a bias for large brains. While the zoologist admitted bees could "accomplish astonishing intellectual feats", he claimed they did so only through instinct.
Von Frisch would be skeptical that bees would be able to remove the cap of a drink. It is possible that the bees just got lucky, and that they were driven to wander by a sweet reward.
Nature can still surprise us. In the bee brain, a single nerve cell can sometimes reach 100,000 other cells.
This is amazing. I forget where I read it, but I recently saw the question posed "can cells make decisions and change their minds". The article related to amoeba behavior.
It is really profound to contemplate the origins and commonality of thought inherent in all life.
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