Can insects have culture? Puzzle-solving bumblebees show it's possible

Can insects have culture? A new study in the journal PLOS Biology finds that these humble insects can actually learn to solve puzzles from one another, suggesting that even some invertebrates like these social insects have a capacity for what we humans call "culture." In the past couple of decades, a growing body of evidence has accumulated to show that animals like chimps and birds show evidence of culture, "by which we really mean just that animals learn from each other," says Andy Whiten, a cognitive ethologist who studies wild animal minds at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Enlarge this image Alice Bridges Alice Bridges The bees were always "hacking" the puzzle by, for example, squeezing through unintended gaps in the device to reach the tasty prize inside. Bridges cut a small hole in the lid "to form a rotating top that can be spun by pushing either on this red tab clockwise or the blue tab anti-clockwise."