A buff-tailed bumblebee on an artificial flower

Bee lab at Southern Medical University

Bumblebees have learned to recognise Morse code-like sequences of flashing lights and vibrations, demonstrating a sense of rhythm that has never been seen in such a small-brained animal.

The ability to recognise flexible, abstract rhythms – when, for example, the same pattern or melody is played at a different tempo in different ways – has only been demonstrated in a few birds and mammals, including parrots , songbirds and primates like chimpanzees .

Andrew Barron at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues ran a series of experiments to try to determine whether buff-tailed bumblebees ( Bombus terrestris ), which have far less complex brains, could also recognise a range of different rhythms.

In the first experiment, bumblebees learned to choose between two artificial flowers consisting of flashing LED lights.…