With advances in research, each passing day sees what makes man a little less man. We, Homo Sapiens, a species so superior to the rest of the animal world thanks to special abilities, surpass all the others. But the more we observe others, the less unique we can feel. This is the case with primates and today also with… insects!
A difficult term to define
Ethology, a recent science (just over a century), teaches us a little more about the intelligence of bees, to the point that some specialists no longer hesitate today to openly ask themselves the question of whether, like us, they can have a… conscience. “The term remains difficult to define for humans and it is even more so for living beings who do not speak. But the latest research on animal cognition shows that certain insects have unsuspected abilities and signs of emotions. is still around twenty years old”, explains Mathieu Lihoreau, CNRS researcher at the Center for Integrative Biology in Toulouse (CBI) who published “What do bees think about” (Editions HumenSciences).
On paper, we don’t box in the same category: bees have a brain the size of a pinhead with “only” a million neurons (compared to 100 billion in humans) and a billion synapses . And yet, our brains are strangely similar. Just open their “skull” (cuticle) to see that their neurons are connected within a similar organization to ours with visual processing areas and olfactory processing areas, etc. Then the information passes in the direction of so-called “central” zones. Example ? One of them called “stalked body”, similar to our hippocampus serves as a place where memory is formed. “As soon as it leaves its nest for the first time, the bee must learn to identify and memorize the environment around the hive. It goes from darkness to a complex luminous world”, explains the ethologist. Hence a series of learning flights that make her move slowly at first, then faster and faster and further and further. And the researcher to specify: “It thus builds a visual and spatial memory.”
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Then, since this is its function, the little beast must learn to collect nectar. For this, she can count on her eyes (5,000 photoreceptors) which allow her to see light in a spectrum a little different from ours (a poppy will appear gray to her, for example). Its mobile antennae are sensitive to a wide variety of smells, helping it to locate the most interesting flowers, that is to say with the most nectar-rich glands. Its sense of smell is so developed that it detects odors to which humans are insensitive, such as certain scents of cannabis, traces of explosives or even body odors, in particular those of people with Covid-19. In this sense, bees can be trained as one does with sniffer dogs. “They must therefore learn and memorize from an early age, the shapes, colors, smell, texture, even the electromagnetic signature of flowers”, sums up Mathieu Lihoreau.
There is also, in their flight activity, a process, and therefore a collective intelligence: scientists have shown that bees recognize flowers that have already been foraged and learn in this way which are the best. Similarly, by observing their congeners, they have the ability to learn other foraging techniques – by attacking, for example, the stem directly rather than the nectary. We can then speak of “cultural learning”. Finally, without specialists understanding the exact process, these insects have the ability to develop routes to connect their nests to food sites in the most efficient way. On average, a honey bee (the most common), forages within a radius of 3 kilometers around the hive, but some species (there are more than 20,000) can travel longer distances – the record is held by the tropical bee (30 kilometres). In order to orient themselves, they refer to the position of the Sun thanks to a kind of “internal clock”. On the other hand, contrary to the first hypotheses, it seems that they do not manufacture a sophisticated “cognitive map” but learn to locate important sites. “Simplifying one could say that the bees do not have a “Michelin map” in their head which would provide them with all the information around to go from one point to another, but rather develop a “metro map”, telling them where the best places are located like so many stations”, image Mathieu Lihoreau.
A power of imagination
In what makes them ever closer to us is also an ability to distinguish their fellows, each having a different “face mask”. This individual recognition allows them to establish a hierarchy in society and to assign a social rank. Just as they experience emotions: in the laboratory, ethologists have shown that they can be victims of stress or also suffer from forced confinement, or even demonstrate optimism and pessimism. “Another long unsuspected ability is that bees have a real power of imagination, continues the Toulouse researcher. We know that some of them are able to plan their behavior. For example, in an experiment, we learned to bumblebees to go into holes of different sizes: they then develop a mental representation of the shape of the object they encounter and know how to pass the obstacle, in particular by putting themselves sideways, because they have a conscience of their own size.” Another facet of the imagination developed this time by the bees, they can modify the interior structure of their hive to make it more solid. “We must beware of any anthropomorphic excess, but learning, emotions, a certain talent for counting, metacognition, etc., are abilities that bees and we have in common. Why would a cat or a dog have a conscience and not them? asks Mathieu Lihoreau.
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Before concluding: “All these questions remain widely debated within the scientific community”. His works on the intelligence of insects seem inexhaustible. Their main purpose is to identify ways to safeguard them since their populations are invariably declining due to the use of pesticides destroying their brains. However, 80% of plant reproduction depends on pollination. And nature without plants would not only be less beautiful. Behind the survival of bees, there is therefore also that of Homo Sapiens.
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