Bumblebees rolling wooden balls may be first evidence of insect play

Buff-tailed bumblebees look to similar to play with woody balls alternatively than simply bypass them en way to a snack

Life 2 November 2022

By Corryn Wetzel

Bumblebees play, perchance conscionable for the amusive of it. The insects repeatedly chose to rotation woody balls successful an experimentation contempt having nary wide reward for doing so. The find whitethorn beryllium the archetypal documented grounds of insects playing.

Samadi Galpayage astatine Queen Mary University of London and her squad were inspired to analyse if bees play aft uncovering that the insects could beryllium trained to balls into tiny shot goals for a nutrient reward successful 2017.

In a caller study, the squad placed 45 buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris audax) of antithetic sexes and ages successful an arena with a azygous entrance. There was a wide aisle from the entranceway to pollen and sweetener h2o successful the backmost of the chamber, but the insects had to walk betwixt 2 adjacent rooms with 18 colourful woody balls to get there. One country had free-moving balls, portion the different had balls that were glued down.

A playful bee

Richard Rickitt

Over 18 3-hour sessions, the bees opted to participate the portion with free-moving balls 50 per cent much often than the portion with stationary balls. Each bee rolled balls betwixt 1 and 117 times passim the survey contempt having nary evident inducement to bash so.

“When you look astatine the videos of the bees connected the balls, if you saw that successful a dog, oregon a monkey, oregon adjacent a bird, we’d person nary occupation calling it play,” says Gordon Burghardt astatine the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was not progressive successful the work.

Not each bees had the aforesaid knack for playfulness. Younger bees rolled much balls than older bees, and males rolled balls for longer than females of the aforesaid age. Just arsenic kittens and puppies pounce and wrestle to physique hunting skills, the intelligence and carnal workout of play whitethorn beryllium particularly beneficial during bumblebees’ youth, says Galpayage.

Because ball-rolling appears spontaneous and voluntary and doesn’t person contiguous oregon semipermanent benefits for the insects, they could beryllium doing it to person a bully time, says Galpayage. “With humans, we tin ask, ‘Are you having fun?’,” she says. “Whereas with animals, it’s ever hard to measure that.”

Journal reference: Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013

More connected these topics:

• bumblebees
• bees