{"id":3658,"date":"2025-11-12T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T13:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/12\/bees-have-mastered-morse-code\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T13:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T13:00:17","slug":"bees-have-mastered-morse-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/12\/bees-have-mastered-morse-code\/","title":{"rendered":"Bees have mastered Morse code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2025-11-12 13:00:15<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>Bumblebees can tell the difference between &#8220;dots&#8221; and &#8220;dashes&#8221; &#8211; just like in Morse code.<BR><br \/>\nIn a world-first, scientists at Queen Mary University of London found that the common buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) can distinguish between short and long flashes of light and use them to decide where to forage for food \u2014 a skill previously seen only in humans, macaques, and pigeons.<BR><br \/>\nLed by PhD student Alex Davidson and his supervisor Dr. Elisabetta Versace, the team trained bees in a specially designed maze where flashing circles indicated whether a reward \u2014 sugary water \u2014 or a bitter substance was waiting. <BR><br \/>\nA short flash, or &#8220;dot&#8221;, meant sugar, while a long flash, or &#8220;dash&#8221;, signalled something unpleasant.<BR><br \/>\nThe researchers constantly changed the position of the lights so the bees couldn\u2019t rely on location alone.  When the sugar was removed, most bees still flew straight to the &#8220;correct&#8221; flash duration, proving they had learned to identify timing cues rather than smell or position.<BR><br \/>\nDavidson said: &#8220;We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn the difference between these different durations, and it was so exciting to see them do it.<BR><br \/>\n&#8220;Since bees don&#8217;t encounter flashing stimuli in their natural environment, it&#8217;s remarkable that they could succeed at this task. The fact that they could track the duration of visual stimuli might suggest an extension of a time processing capacity that has evolved for different purposes, such as keeping track of movement in space or communication.&#8221;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2025-11-12 13:00:15 Bumblebees can tell the difference between &#8220;dots&#8221; and &#8220;dashes&#8221; &#8211; just like in Morse code. In a world-first, scientists at Queen Mary University of London found that the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2738,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3659,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658\/revisions\/3659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}