The bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) may be able to create false memories over time in a fashion similar to people. (Image credit: Marko Kivelä, flickr.com)
People are known to have false memories where they remember experiences that never occurred. Can these errors also occur in animals? Researchers have found that bumblebees may be capable of creating false memories.
The researchers made this observation by training bumblebees to expect a reward from either a solid coloured flower or a patterned one. then reversing the reward. The retrained bees were then more likely to frequent a third type of flower that combined the colour and pattern of the previous flower, having “merged’ the memory of the flower types together.
Original research paper published in Cell Press on February 26, 2015.
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