It may look adorable, but the fact that bumblebees can learn to roll a ball to get a reward is a big deal. Research from this group lead by Clint Perry and Olli Loukola had previously shown bumblebees are much smarter than people give them credit for. That experiment involved teaching the bees how to pull a string to get access to food. The ball experiment was a little different. The trained bees were given the choice of three balls positioned at different distances away from the goal on the platform.

Source: Forbes February 27, 2017 23:11 UTC