Science reports:

Bumble bees are hardly nature’s most graceful creatures, and their name reflects it. But it turns out these bees show a surprising knack for rhythm. The fuzzy insects can not only recognize a rhythm but also identify the same pattern when scientists change the tempo, according to research published on 2 April in Science—the first time this ability has been documented outside of a few mammals and birds.

“That’s an unexpected, beautiful finding,” says Henkjan Honing, a music cognition researcher at the University of Amsterdam, who was not involved in the study. The bumble bee brain “did something very sophisticated—and that’s like, wow!” adds Peter Cook, a behavioral neuroscientist at New College of Florida, also not involved in the research.

Insects, including crickets and fireflies, can mimic unvarying rhythms of other individuals’ chirps and flashes. But the ability to recognize the same rhythms at different tempos— what’s known as flexible rhythm perception—had long been assumed to be a complex mental task requiring a large brain. Inspired by the remarkable cognitive abilities of bees, including simple tool use and social learning, neuroscientist Zijie Zeng of Southern Medical University (SMU) and colleagues decided to evaluate their ability to detect and respond to rhythms. [Continue reading…]