Ball-Playing Bumblebees

Researchers prove that bees seek out play activities

Today’s header (sourced via BBC News) highlights an experiment done by Queen Mary University in London last year. Published in the Journal of Animal Behavior in October 2022, a study found that when given a choice, bumblebees frequently chose to roll wooden balls voluntarily, without any enticements. They assert that this behavior indicates that bees seek out play activities; that is, an activity spontaneously chosen with no other reward beyond the pleasure of performing the action.

There are five basic criteria that must be met in order for an behavior to be considered play: Firstly, the activity must not be performed in order to meet a specific survival objective such as obtaining food, or a mate or shelter; Secondly, the behavior must be voluntary and spontaneous, with rewards being simply that of performing the action; Thirdly, the actions performed must be distinct from those performed when searching for food or attracting a mate; Fourthly, the behavior must be repeated; And finally, the behavior must be observed while the subject is relaxed (e.g. repetitive motions such as pacing due to stress or boredom do not count as play). The researchers found that in their experiments, the bees that chose ball rolling fit all of the criteria to consider the activity to be play.

The play research was initiated as an offshoot of a previous experiment where bees were trained to push balls around for a reward on a tiny soccer (that’s football to you non-Americans) field. This research was also super-cute!

During this previous experiment, researchers noticed that frequently the subject bees went back to rolling the tiny soccer balls without any reward being offered. They posited that bees would sometimes chose to play without rewards, and set up the ball rolling experiments to test the theory. The results, say the studies’ authors are both mind-blowing and amusing; it shows that despite their small size and tiny brains, bees may actually experience positive emotional states, even if more rudimentary than larger-brained mammals.

I personally want to see many more bumblebee soccer games. This would certainly lead to more positive emotional states for me, and hopefully for the winged combatants too.

ARS Technica: "Bees like to roll little wooden balls as a form of play, study finds" by Jennifer Ouellette, 12/29/22