Humans are prone to creating "false memories," and new research suggests bumblebees may experience the same phenomenon.
The recent study is the first to look at false memories in a non-human animal, and the findings suggest it could be widespread across the animal kingdom, Cell Press reported. Bumblebees can remember the patterns, colors, and scents of a variety of flowers, and how to get back to their hive after a long journey.
"We discovered that the memory traces for two stimuli can merge, such that features acquired in distinct bouts of training are combined in the animal's mind," said Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London. "[As a result], stimuli that have actually never been viewed before, but are a combination of the features presented in training, are chosen during memory recall."
To make their findings, a team of researchers trained bumblebees to expect a reward when visiting an artificial yellow flower followed by own with black and white rings, or the other way around. In later experiments, the bees were given a choice between three types of flowers, two which were the yellow and black and white varieties they had already been presented with, and one type that was a mix between the two with yellow and white rings.
Directly after the training, the bees showed a preference for the flower that had most recently led to a reward. A few days later, the bees showed the same preference at first but became confused over the course of the day. Half of the time, the bees selected the flowers with yellow rings, even though they had never seen it before.
These findings suggest bees experience a merging of long-term memories that is comparable to memory conjunction errors in humans. This is believed to be a result of an adaptive memory system, and past findings have shown humans who are especially skilled in learning rules to classify objects are also more susceptible to false memories.
"There is no question that the ability to extract patterns and commonalities between different events in our environment [is] adaptive," Chittka said. "Indeed, the ability to memorize the overarching principles of a number of different events might help us respond in new situations. But these abilities might come at the expense of remembering every detail correctly."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Current Biology.
