Enlarge / Bumblebees can learn to solve puzzles from experienced peers. Honeybees do the same to learn their waggle dances. (credit: Diego Perez-Lopez, PLoS/CC-BY 4.0 )

Social insects like bees demonstrate a remarkable range of behaviors, from working together to build structurally complex nests (complete with built-in climate control) to the pragmatic division of labor within their communities. Biologists have traditionally viewed these behaviors as pre-programmed responses that evolved over generations in response to external factors. But two papers last week reported results indicating that social learning might also play a role.

The first, published in the journal PLoS Biology, demonstrated that bumblebees could learn to solve simple puzzles by watching more experienced peers. The second , published in the journal Science, reported evidence for similar social learning in how honeybees learn to perform their trademark "waggle dance" to tell other bees in their colony where to find food or other resources. Taken together, both studies add to a growing body of evidence of a kind of "culture" among social insects like bees.

"Culture can be broadly defined as behaviors that are acquired through social learning and are maintained in a population over time, and essentially serves as a 'second form of inheritance,' but most studies have been conducted on species with relatively large brains: primates, cetaceans, and passerine birds," said co-author Alice Bridges , a graduate student at Queen Mary University of London who works in the lab of co-author Lars Chittka . "I wanted to study bumblebees in particular because they are perfect models for social learning experiments. They have previously been shown to be able to learn really complex, novel, non-natural behaviors such as string-pulling both individually and socially."

Enlarge / A common cuttlefish, Sepia officianalis , in the Marine Resources Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA. A new study finds the cuttlefish can delay gratification—a key feature of the famous "marshmallow test." (credit: Alexandra Schnell)

Certain species show a remarkable ability to delay gratification, notably great apes, corvids, and parrots, while other species do not (such as rodents, chickens, and pigeons.) Add the cuttlefish to the former category.

Scientists administered an adapted version of the Stanford marshmallow test to cuttlefish and found the cephalopods could delay gratification—that is, wait a bit for preferred prey rather than settling for a less desirable prey. Cuttlefish also performed better in a subsequent learning test, according to a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It's the first time such a link between self-control and intelligence has been found in a non-mammalian species.

As we've previously reported , the late Walter Mischel's landmark behavioral study involved 600 kids between the ages of four and six, all culled from Stanford University's Bing Nursery School. He would give each child a marshmallow and give them the option of eating it immediately if they chose. But if they could wait 15 minutes, they would get a second marshmallow as a reward. Then Mischel would leave the room, and a hidden video camera would tape what happened next.

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