What makes humans unique?
Tool use is a relative rare phenomenon in animals—less than 1% of the animal genera has been described to use tools- but it is taxonomically widespread. In fact, insects, marine invertebrates, fish, birds and mammals are the only taxonomic groups reported to use tools. The presence of this behaviour across different taxa has raised a question that remains unsolved to this day: do all these animal tool behaviours reflect intelligence or are they a reflection of specialised mechanisms?
Seeing an animal using a tool captures everybody’s attention—probably because it makes us question what marks humans out as truly unique. However, we currently lack a complete picture of whether and how tool use evolved in other animals, including invertebrates. The aim of this exciting project is to investigate tool use in an invertebrate species of bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). Bees display a sophisticated set of behaviours in a complex foraging context and, as such, provide an excellent study system to examine this behaviour in insects. This project will answer whether bumblebees understand that objects in the environment have properties and that can be used to achieve a goal. The findings will represent a step-change in tool use research, and, more generally, in human cognition research by exposing whether species which diverged from vertebrates over 550 million years ago are able of such a cognitive achievement.
This project is funded by The British Academy.
