Transcript:

So, humans are considered to be a cultured species. What does it mean by cultured? Cultured means that by simply observing someone else do a certain task, the person observing also learns and then, when the task is presented to the person observing, they are able to mimic that task. So, this we know very well as humans, but what about bumble bees?

It turns out that bumble bees also are a cultured species. So, this was the experimental setup: the blue tab had to be rotated away from the red tab before the red tab can be rotated. And below the red tab, rotated, is sweet water—it's sugar water. So, they put one bumble bee in this apparatus and, over many trials, the bumble bee figured out what to do, and another one was simply observing this first one. And this is the paper in Nature where they reported it.

So, it is pretty amazing that the bumble bee that was observing, when the task was presented to it, it totally solved the problem. No worries. For the first time, culture has been shown to be present in bumble bees. It is fascinating.