AssetID: 55265214
Headline: British scientists teach bees to 'read' morse code
Caption: **VIDEO AVAILABLE: CONTACT INFO@COVERMG.COM TO RECEIVE** British scientists have taught bumblebees to “read” Morse code by training them to tell the difference between short and long light flashes. It’s a skill previously thought to exist only in humans and other vertebrates, according to a new study. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London found that the bumblebee Bombus terrestris was able to choose where to forage for food based on how long a light flashed. The findings, published in the journal Biology Letters, show for the first time that an insect can make decisions based on the duration of visual cues. In Morse code, a short flash or “dot” represents the letter “E”, while a long flash or “dash” stands for the letter “T”. Until now, the ability to distinguish between a “dot” and a “dash” had been observed only in humans and vertebrates such as macaques and pigeons. PhD student Alex Davidson and his supervisor, Dr Elisabetta Versace, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary, led the research. Their team built a specially designed maze to train individual bees to find a sugar reward at one of two flashing circles, which displayed either short or long light flashes. When the short flash, or “dot”, was associated with sugar, the long flash, or “dash”, was linked to a bitter substance that bees dislike. To prevent the insects from relying on spatial cues, the researchers changed the position of the flashing lights in each section of the maze. Once the bees had learned to head straight for the flashing circle paired with the sugar, they were tested again using lights that flashed without any reward present. This ensured the bees’ decisions were based on the timing of the flashes, rather than any scent or residual visual cues from the sugar. The results showed that most bees went directly to the light duration that had previously been associated with sugar, regardless of its location. Alex Davidson said: “We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn the difference between these different durations, and it was so exciting to see them do it.” “Since bees don’t encounter flashing stimuli in their natural environment, it’s remarkable that they could succeed at this task. The fact that they could track the duration of visual stimuli might suggest an extension of a time processing capacity that has evolved for different purposes, such as keeping track of movement in space or communication.” “Alternatively, this surprising ability to encode and process time duration might be a fundamental component of the nervous system that is intrinsic in the properties of neurons. Only further research will be able to address this issue.” The neural mechanisms that allow animals to keep track of time over such short durations are still poorly understood. Mechanisms identified for circadian rhythms and seasonal cycles act over much longer timescales and cannot explain the ability to tell a “dash” from a “dot”. Scientists have proposed that animals may use one or several internal clocks to measure short intervals. Now that such an ability has been demonstrated in insects, researchers can test competing theories using these “miniature brains” – each smaller than a cubic millimetre. Dr Elisabetta Versace said: “Many complex animal behaviours, such as navigation and communication, depend on time processing abilities. It will be important to use a broad comparative approach across different species, including insects, to shed light on the evolution of those abilities.” “Processing durations in insects is evidence of a complex task solution using minimal neural substrate. This has implications for complex cognitive-like traits in artificial neural networks, which should seek to be as efficient as possible to be scalable, taking inspiration from biological intelligence.”
Keywords: Bees, morse code, science, feature, photo, video, insects
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