First demonstration of “cumulative” animal culture

For the first time, we really saw an animal accumulating knowledge, a bumblebee. Details from Hervé Poirier.

Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloontells us today about the first real demonstration of a cumulative culture, in the animal world.

The experiment was carried out on bumblebees. And it demonstrates that these small insects are capable of learning a new complex behavior that they would not have been able to invent themselves, simply by watching their fellow insects carry it out successfully. It is this cumulative culture that allowed humans to ultimately succeed in building a car or a smart phone. This is a first for an invertebrate.

franceinfo: Hervé, you tell us that for the first time, we have really seen an animal accumulate knowledge. And that animal is the bumblebee! we will have to explain.

Hervé Poirier: Cumulative culture is the secret of human inventiveness. No one is capable of designing a car, a telephone, a rocket or a computer on their own. These technologies could only be designed because humans know how to accumulate knowledge acquired by others.

Is this unique to our species? Animal experts think not. The washing of food by a macaque, or the design of leaf tools by a crow, are often cited examples of animal cumulative culture. Except this has never really been proven.

Because these behaviors are relatively simple: they could be reinvented by a macaque or a crow without social learning. For the first time, with the bumblebee, it is clear: we saw a cumulative culture at work. We have seen this insect succeed in doing things that they would not have been able to invent on their own.

What exactly are we talking about when we talk about cumulative culture?

The experiment was carried out at Queen Mary University in London. There is a transparent box which contains a sweet reward: to open it, you must first push a blue tab, which releases a red tab, which you must push again. Complex.

So complex that three colonies of bumblebees who tried for a long time never succeeded in unlocking the system. But biologists trained 6 bumblebees to solve this problem, patiently making them progress, step by step. Each was then placed with another naïve bumblebee, who discovered the device.

However, after 30 to 40 20-minute sessions, a third of these novices succeeded in opening the box! They are not capable of inventing this behavior themselves: they have therefore effectively learned it, by watching their mentor successfully take up the challenge. QED…

And what purpose does this cumulative culture serve them?

Not opening boxes or building rockets… In the natural environment, it’s not very clear. And probably quite limited, since bumblebee colonies only last two to three months: not enough time to accumulate a lot of knowledge.

Cumulative cultivation might be more impressive in other closely related social insects, such as honeybees, which form colonies that last for years or even decades. In any case, the proof has now been made: accumulating knowledge is not unique to humans.