Bees like to roll little wooden balls as a form of play, study finds
Enlarge / This bee seems to be having a grand old time rolling this colored wooden ball. (credit: Samadi Galpayage)
There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we're once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2022, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: Scientists captured bees rolling wooden balls, solely for fun, on video, providing additional evidence that bees might experience positive "feelings."
Many animals are known to engage in play-usually large-brained mammals (like humans) and birds. Now scientists think they have observed genuine play behavior in bees, which were filmed rolling small colored wooden balls, according to an October paper published in the journal Animal Behavior.
This research provides a strong indication that insect minds are far more sophisticated than we might imagine," said co-author Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London and author of a recent book, The Mind of a Bee. "There are lots of animals who play just for the purposes of enjoyment, but most examples come from young mammals and birds."