Honeybees have become the first invertebrates to exhibit pessimism, a benchmark cognitive trait supposedly limited to “higher” animals.
If these honeybee blues are interpreted as they would be in dogs or horses or humans, then insects might have feelings.
Honeybee response “has more in common with that of vertebrates than previously thought,” wrote Newcastle University researchers Melissa Bateson and Jeri Wright in their bee study, published June 2 in Current Biology. The findings “suggest that honeybees could be regarded as exhibiting emotions.”
Read the entire article over at Wired.
Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 