Researchers have found that bumblebees mix up memories too, merging the past to form new false remembrances -- just like humans. The findings suggest any animal that has to juggle multiple memories is likely to have the same problem.
Scientists at Queen Mary University of London discovered the bees' memory lapse through series of training exercises. First, researchers trained the bees to associate a black-ringed flower with food. Bees soon only targeted this flower. After a few days, researchers changed things up, training the bees to associate food with a yellow flower. The bees obliged, now ignoring the black-ringed flowers in favor of the yellow ones.
After a few days, the scientists presented the bees with a range of flower designs and found the test subjects preferred yellow flowers accented with black rings. The bees had confused their old memories.
"Anyone who's ever found themselves misremembering things in an exam will be able to sympathise with these bumblebees," lead study author Lars Chittka, a professor at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, explained in a press release. "That people form false memories is well understood but it has never been seen in other animals before."
"There are a lot of similarities between our own memories and those of other animals," Chittka added. "The more we know about the way that memory works in the animal kingdom the more we'll be able to understand our own memory and the problems we have with it."
The new study was published in the journal Current Biology.
Source: UPI