Vwander half full or glass half empty? We all know that the world is divided into two: optimists on one side, and pessimists on the other. It’s just that this border is constantly moving. Because we’ve all been there: being around certain friends makes us happy and optimistic, while other friends make us excited.
Ethologists have observed this emotional contagion in many animals. Monkeys, dolphins, mice; recently in crows, parrots, and even zebrafish. It is enough to suppose that it is widespread among vertebrates. In an article published in the journal Science on October 23, a Chinese team just showed that the same is true for… bees, in other words an invertebrate with a brain the size of a pinhead.
According to Fei Peng’s team at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, it only takes thirty seconds of eye contact with an optimistic individual for the other person to have a positive outlook on life. At this last statement, every reader will immediately wonder what optimistic bees are and how do we know them. To do this, researchers rely on a property called “judgment bias.” Insects are preconditioned, that is, they know that by landing on a blue artificial flower, they will encounter a sweet liquid, and if they land on a green artificial flower, they will have to make do with a little water. (It’s worth noting that this test wouldn’t work with red flowers, because the bees don’t see these wavelengths.) In eight tries, the bees got it. But what do they do if the flowers are blue-green?
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