Animal Intelligence Part 12

At 11.50 she came out, fed, and returned straight to the hive; she then stayed in for some time.

At 12.30 she came out again, but seemed to have forgotten the way back; after some time, however, she found the door and went in.

Again:--August 24 at 7.20 a bee came through the postern: I fed her; and though she was not frightened or disturbed, when she had finished her meal she flew to the window and had evidently lost her way; so at 8 o'clock I in pity put her back myself.

August 29.--A bee came out to the honey at 10.10; at 10.12 she flew to the window, and remained buzzing about till 11.12, when, being satisfied that she could not find her way, I put her in.

Nay, even those who seemed to know the postern, if taken near the other window, flew to it, and seemed to have lost themselves.

This cost me a great many bees. Those which got into my room by accident continually died on the floor near the window.

These observations show that even when a bee is not _carried_ from the hive to the honey, but herself _flies_ to it, her sense of direction is not alone sufficient to enable her to find the way back to the hive--or, rather, to the unaccustomed entrance to the hive from which she had come out. Probably if the side window had been open, the bee would have returned to the hive round the corner of the house, and through the entrance to which she was most accustomed. But as it was she had to _learn_, by five or six journeys, the way between the postern entrance and the food.

But the following observation on a wasp is in this connection the most conclusive.

A marked wasp visited honey exposed in the room before mentioned. 'The next morning she came--

At 7.25, and fed till 7.28, when she began flying about the room and even into the next; so I thought it well to put her out of the window, when she flew straight away to her nest. My room, as already mentioned, had windows on two sides; and the nest was in the direction of a closed window, so that the wasp had to go out of her way in going out through the open one.

At 7.45 she came back. I had moved the gla.s.s containing the honey about two yards; and though it stood conspicuously, the wasp seemed to have much difficulty in finding it. Again she flew to the window in the direction of her nest, and I had to put her out, which I did at 8.2.

At 8.15 she returned to the honey almost straight.

8.21, she flew again to the closed window, and apparently could not find her way; so at 8.35 I put her out again. It seems obvious from this that wasps have a sense of direction, and do not find their way merely by sight.

At 8.50 back to honey, and 8.54 again to wrong window; but finding it closed, she took two or three turns round the room, and then flew out through the open window.

At 9.24 back to the honey; and 9.27 away, first, however, paying a visit to the wrong window, but without alighting.

At 9.36 back to the honey, and 9.39 away, but, as before, going first to wrong window.

She was away therefore 9 minutes.

9.50 " 9.53 away, this time straight. " 11 "

10 " 10. 7 " " 11 "

10.19 " 10.22 " " 12 "

10.35 " 10.39 " " 13 "

10.47 " 10.50 " " 9 "

11. 4 " 11. 7 " " 14 "

11.21 " 11.24 " " 14 "

11.34 " 11.37 " " 10 "

11.49 " 11.52 " " 1 "

12. 3 " 12. 5 " Away therefore 11 minutes.

12.13 " 12.15 " " 8 "

12.25 " 12.28 " " 10 "

12.39 " 12.43 " " 11 "

12.54 " 12.57 " " 11 "

1.15 " 1.19 " " 18 "

1.27 " 1.30 " " 8 minutes,'

&c., &c., the way being now clearly well learnt.

But that the sense of direction is of much service to bees in finding the locality of their hives seems to be indicated by the following observation thus narrated, on the authority of the authors themselves, by Messrs. Kirby and Spence:--

In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of the town. Trees, trees, trees, still met me, and intercepted the view in every direction; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly over it. The bees, therefore, ... must be led to their abodes by instinct, &c.

The observation, however, is not so conclusive as its authors suppose; for there is nothing to show that the bees did not take note of particular objects on their accustomed routes, and so learn these routes by stages. It would be worth while in this connection to try the effect of hooding the eyes of a bee, or, if this were deemed too disturbing an experiment, removing the hive bodily to a distance from its accustomed site, and observing whether the bees start away boldly as before for long flights, or learn their new routes by stages.

In this connection I may quote the following.

Mr. John Topham, of Marlborough House, Torquay, writing to 'Nature,'[46]

says:--

On October 29, 1873, I removed a hive of bees in my garden, after it was quite dark, for a distance of 12 yards from the place in which it had stood for several months; and between its original situation and the new one there was a bushy evergreen tree, so that all sight of its former place was obstructed to a person looking from the new situation of the hive.

Notwithstanding this change, the bees every day flew to the locality where they formerly lived, and continued flying around the site of what had been their home until, as night came on, they many of them sank upon the gra.s.s exhausted and chilled by the cold.

Numbers, however, returned alive to their new position, after having looked in vain for their hive in its old place. At night I picked the exhausted bees up, and having restored warmth to them (by leaving them for a time on my coat-sleeve), I returned them to their companions.

Here was an ill.u.s.tration that the faculty of memory was superior to that of observation; but that was not all. Nearly every bee which I picked up during the 23 days through which this effort of memory lasted was an _old one_, as was easily deduced from observing the worn edges of the wings; showing that whilst the young insects were quick in receiving new impressions and in correcting errors, the nervous system of the old bees continued _acting in the direction which early habit had effected_. So true it is that 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.'

A closely similar observation has been told me by a friend, Mr. George Turner. He found that when he removed a beehive only a yard or two from its accustomed site, the bees, on returning home, flew in swarms around the latter, and for a long time were unable to find the hive. And several other similar cases might be adduced. Lastly, Thompson says:--

It is highly remarkable that they [bees] know their hive more from its locality than from its appearance, for if it be removed during their absence and a similar one be subst.i.tuted, they enter the strange one. If the position of a hive be changed, the bees for the first day take no distant flight till they have thoroughly scrutinised every object in its neighbourhood.[47]

On the other hand, the writer of the article on 'Bees' in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' says that in certain parts of France it is the habit of bee-keepers to place a number of hives upon a boat, which, in charge of a man, floats slowly down a river. The bees are thus continuously changing their pasture-ground, and yet do not lose their locomotive hives.

It may be here worth while to add, parenthetically, as the only authentic observation with which I am acquainted concerning the distance that bees are accustomed to forage, the following statement of Prof.

Hugh Blackburn. Writing from Glasgow University to 'Nature,'[48] he says that bees are found in a certain peach-house every spring at the time of blossom, although, so far as he can ascertain, the beehives nearest to the peach-house in question are his own, and these are at a distance of ten miles.

On the whole, then, and in the absence of further experiments, we must conclude it to be probable that the sense of direction with which hymenopterous insects are, as shown by some of Sir John Lubbock's experiments, unquestionably endowed, is of no small use to them in finding their way from home to food and _vice versa_; although it appears certain, from other of his experiments, that this sense of direction is not in all cases a sufficient guide, and therefore requires to be supplemented by the definite observation of landmarks.

But the most conclusive evidence on this latter point is afforded by a highly interesting observation of Mr. Bates on the sand-wasps at Santurem, which may here be suitably introduced, as the insects are not distantly allied. He describes these animals as always taking a few turns in the air round the hole they had made in the sand before leaving to seek for flies in the forest, apparently in order to mark well the position of the burrow, so that on their return they might find it without difficulty. This observation has been since confirmed in a striking manner by Mr. Belt, who found that the sand-wasp takes the most precise bearings of an object the position of which she desires to remember. This observation is so interesting that it deserves to be rendered _in extenso_:--

A specimen of _Polistes carnifex_ (_i.e._ the sand-wasp noticed by Mr. Bates) was hunting about for caterpillars in my garden. I found one about an inch long, and held it out towards it on the point of a stick. It seized it immediately, and commenced biting it from head to tail, soon reducing the soft body to a ma.s.s of pulp. It rolled up about one-half of it into a ball, and prepared to carry it off. Being at the time amidst a thick ma.s.s of a fine-leaved climbing plant, it proceeded, before flying away, to take note of the place where it was leaving the other half. To do this, it hovered in front of it for a few seconds, then took small circles in front of it, then larger ones round the whole plant. I thought it had gone, but it returned again, and had another look at the opening in the dense foliage down which the other half of the caterpillar lay. It then flew away, but must have left its burden for distribution with its comrades at the nest, for it returned in less than two minutes, and making one circle around the bush, descended to the opening, alighted on a leaf, and ran inside. The green remnant of the caterpillar was lying on another leaf inside, but not connected with the one on which the wasp alighted, so that in running in it missed it, and soon got hopelessly lost in the thick foliage. Coming out again, it took another circle, and pounced down on the same spot again, as soon as it came opposite to it. Three small seed-pods, which here grew close together, formed the marks that I had myself taken to note the place, and these the wasp seemed also to have taken as its guide, for it flew directly down to them, and ran inside; but the small leaf on which the fragment of caterpillar lay not being directly connected with any on the outside, it again missed it, and again got far away from the object of its search.

It then flew out again, and the same process was repeated again and again. Always when in circling round it came in sight of the seed-pods down it pounced, alighted near them, and recommenced its quest on foot. I was surprised at its perseverance, and thought it would have given up the search; but not so, it returned at least half-a-dozen times, and seemed to get angry, hurrying about with buzzing wings. At last it stumbled across its prey, seized it eagerly, and as there was nothing more to come back for, flew straight off to its nest, without taking any further note of the locality. Such an action is not the result of blind instinct, but of a thinking mind; and it is wonderful to see an insect so differently constructed using a mental process similar to that of man.

_Memory._

We may here first allude to an observation of Sir John Lubbock already quoted in another connexion (see p. 147). It is here evident that the wasp, after finding the store of honey in the room, and after finding the window closed in the 'wasp-line' direction to its nest, required three repeated _lessons_ from Sir John before she _learnt_ that the window on the other side of the room, and away from the direction of her nest, afforded no obstacle to her exit. Having learnt this, the fourth time she came she again flew to the closed window as before, and then, as if but dimly remembering that there was another opening somewhere that offered no such mysterious resistance to her pa.s.sage, 'she took two or three turns round the room, and then flew out through the open window.' Having now taken the bearings of all the room upon her own wings, and having again found the difference between the two windows in respect of resistance, although in all other respects so much alike, the next time she came she made in the first instance as it were an experimental flight towards the closed window, but clearly had the alternative of going to the open one in her memory; for on finding the window closed as before, she did not alight, but flew straight from the closed to the open window. The same thing happened once again, but now, with the distinction between the two windows thus fully learnt, and with it the perception that in this case 'the shortest cut was the longest way round,' she never again flew to the closed window; in the forty successive visits which she paid through the remainder of that day, and the hundred visits or so which she made during the two following days, she seems to have uniformly flown to the open window.

As evidence of _forgetfulness_, it will be enough to refer to the case of another wasp which, under precisely similar circ.u.mstances to those just detailed, learnt her way out of the open window one day, having made fifty pa.s.sages through it in five hours. Yet Sir John remarks,--

It struck me as curious that on the following day this wasp seemed by no means so sure of her way, but over and over again went to the closed window.

It is further of interest to note, as showing the similarity of the memory displayed by these insects with that of the higher animals, that there are considerable individual differences to be found in the degree of its manifestation.

In this respect they certainly differ considerably.

Some of the bees which came out of the little postern door (already described) were able to find their way back after it had been shown to them a few times.

Others were much more stupid; thus one bee came out on the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th, and came to the honey; but though I repeatedly put her back through the postern, she was never able to find her way for herself.

I often found that if bees which were brought to honey did not return at once, still they would do so a day or two afterwards. For instance, on July 11, 1874, a hot thundery day, and when the bees were much out of humour, I brought twelve bees to some honey; only one came back, and that one only twice; but on the following day several of them returned.