Bumble bees like to keep to themselves This one is too busy drinking nectar and gathering pollen from flowers to bother with people GARY MAYES GETTY IMAGES
Introduction One summer I got a job working with bumble bees I had to catch wild bumble bees and watch their behavior as they flew in an indoor screened cage I was terrified I thought What am I doing I'll be stung every day But as a university student I was desperate for summer employment I soon realized that bumble bees are not stinging machines ready to pounce on human flesh They are too busy gathering food nectar and pollen from flowers to feed the hundreds of bees in their family looking after all the eggs that will hatch into new bees and keeping their nest tidy They keep to themselves I started to relax Part of my job was to run experiments that involved fake flowers All the flowers looked the same However in some of the flowers there was nectar which was water mixed with table sugar This nectar had no scent so the only way the bees could find the nectar filled flowers was by memorizing their locations Well the bumble bees figured this out fast Their memories were impressive For the rest of the summer every time I gave the bees new tests with the fake flowers they passed with flying colors I had no idea they are little problem-solvers
As we will see a lot goes on in the mind of this bumble bee and in the minds of other animals RUTH HIGGINSON Cognition comes from a Latin word meaning to know I also learned that no two bees are alike There were big differences between foragers bees that collect food Some were superstars foraging nonstop every day flying lightning fast in a straight line back and forth between the flowers and the nest Others were slower and didn't forage as often Then there were those who left the nest and couldn't find their way back I had to pick them up gently with a long pair of tweezers and place them back in the nest I realized I had assumed all bees were copies of one another and behaved the same way Instead there are individual differences among bees The professor I worked for that summer studied animal cognition how animals learn remember make decisions and solve problems She studied how animals think I had no idea scientists could spend their careers studying that I was hooked I decided to study animal cognition too It opened up a whole new world for me that I want to share with you Although I can't fit the entire world of animal cognition into this book I thought we could explore how scientists tackle questions like Do dolphins have personalities Can lions count So settle in get comfy and let's explore the minds of other animals 2
Humans are animals too In this book humans and animals are referred to separately to keep things clear and simple Have you ever visited an animal in a petting zoo Have you wondered what they could be thinking about as you held them SOLSTOCK GETTY IMAGES
