A bee drinking a droplet of sugar water. Photo: Clint J Perry
We all know what it's like to taste our favourite food and instantly feel good about the world but the same phenomenon may happen in bumblebees. Thursday 29 September 2016 Biologists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have discovered that after bumblebees drink a small droplet of really sweet sugar water, they behave like they are in a positive emotion-like state. The findings suggest that insects have states that fit the criteria of emotions and open up new avenues for research into positive emotions in relatively simple nervous systems. 'Investigating and understanding the basic features of emotion states will help us determine the brain mechanisms underlying emotion across all animals,' said lead author Dr Clint J Perry. The researchers trained bees to find food at a blue flower and no food at a green flower, and then tested the bees on a new blue-green flower. Bees that drank a small droplet of sugar water prior to the test took less time to land on the ambiguous-coloured flower. Other experiments showed that this behaviour wasn't due to bees just getting more excited or searching faster.
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