Can bumblebees play Legos? They do move Lego pieces together

Ants and bees working together for food and shelter have fascinated humanity since time immemorial. But can they construct elaborate Lego hives? Well, it has emerged that they can't. But they do tinker with Lego pieces while demonstrating awareness about their partner's actions and calibrating their own in response.

Scientists in Finland got the bees to play with toys to study how exactly they coordinate their movements.

"We were surprised by how the bumblebees took into account their partner’s movements when coordinating their own movements in tasks, demonstrating astonishing social intelligence," Olli Loukola, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Oulu, was quoted as saying by the Forbes magazine.

Loukola is the lead author of a new study on bee research published May 1 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The researchers trained one group of bumblebees to work in pairs to push blocks, both styrofoam and Lego and another group to act alone when moving the pieces.

In the first group, scientists observed that when they delayed a partner’s entry into the designated area, the insects that arrived first took a longer while to push the block than bees taught to push the blocks alone.

What does it mean?

The findings deepen humanity's understanding of bumblebee behaviour and could have applications in fields such as robotics and agriculture.

James Dorey, a biological scientist in Australia who was not involved with the study, described the findings as "quite exciting."

"This study is one in a long line of behavioural experiments showing that bees are capable of some really complex tasks, learning and behaviour," Dorey, a lecturer at the University of Wollongong, said in an interview.

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"The research shows that complex cooperative behaviour from social insects can go beyond innate, or hard-wired, actions and that they are even capable of learning behaviours typically associated with animals like primates and dolphins."

The research points out that bumblebees have enough cognitive flexibility to learn to work together when foraging, which they typically do alone.

The research also builds on previous bumblebee studies that suggest bees could understand cooperation on some level, Loukola said.

"The cognitive mechanisms behind insect cooperation have been unexplored, so we aimed to change that," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)