Tiny But Powerful Brains: How Insects Remember

Have you ever wondered how a bee finds the same flower again and again, or how an ant finds its way back home? One of our readers wondered exactly this!

Insects have incredibly tiny brains, smaller than a single grain of rice! Even so, they can learn from experience and remember important information.

Their brains are built from the same basic parts as ours. These include brain cells called neurons and chemicals that allow them to communicate. Their brains also include areas specialized for learning and memory.  An especially important area is called the mushroom bodies.  I bet you can guess why it’s called that – because, it looks like a mushroom! Although insect brains are much smaller and simpler than human brains, the basic principles of how they work are surprisingly similar.

Insect brains make it a priority to remember what can help them to survive. For bees, this can include which flowers have the most nectar, or where a good place to build a hive would be. Bees even have a special “waggle dance” that tells others the directions they’ve learned.  So, one bee can teach another bee what it knows!

How do scientists know that insects really remember things? Obviously these insects can’t talk. So scientists have to be clever in how they design experiments so the insects can show what they remember. For example, a researcher might give a bee a drop of sugar water whenever it smells a certain scent. After a few repetitions, the bee will stick out its tongue as soon as it smells that scent, because it’s learned to expect the sugar water.

So the next time you see a bee buzzing or an ant marching along, you can imagine the tiny but powerful memory system that helps guide its behavior.