waterway in islands of next summer, documentary programs, what new research reveals about the brilliance of insect brains. and there until in berlin, thanks for joining us. the why do, how many does not get drunk? why do go to the table waves, squeeze all bodies? how much do we need a day? do i stop comp, claim for help find the on says get smaller on dw science. oh, tick tock, channel. a small and inconspicuous insect are often reduced to their most

basic functions like eating and producing offspring for the preservation of their species. but in fact, they are highly intelligent. each with a distinct character and personality. as in dvd individual ality of leasing beetles was something i really didn't expect to find. their pin sized brain is a powerhouse. these have a great sense of times. the we now know that some spiders can both plan ahead and think logically. you need to be good at face recognition. they need to be good at understanding relationships and in those particular areas, wasps, our genius, the,

they live among us, observing us, even when we don't notice them. and when we're away, the insects come out to see anything sweet or sugary. they just can't get enough the to us, their behavior might seem pre programmed. many, don't think and sex are capable of intelligent behavior. but more scientists are becoming convinced otherwise. over the past few years, insect researchers have completely changed our preconceptions about the small creatures. in london, lars chicka is researching the behavior of bumblebees and bees. he's considered one

of the pioneers of insect behavioral research as it couldn't buttons that can come into the gins. we can't measure the intelligence quotient of insects with the same test as we do with humans if it comes. but we can, of course, present them with challenges that test their flexibility, the flexibility, a portal. somebody for example, by looking into whether they can counts or solve various tasks. news that are used as intelligence tests for crime aids and course intercom food and that's intelligence tests. but it's lars chip. can i use this bumblebees for one of his most important intelligence tests? they live in his institute at queen mary university. the many skills such as caring for off spring are innate. but would bumblebees also be

able to solve a completely new task which cro could master? sugar of water is added to artificial flowers for an experiment. then 6 bumble. these are led into the box, the gradually they each realized that there is a reward to be had here. in step 2, an obstacle in the form of the plexiglass plate blocks access to the reward. the bumblebees can still see it, but no longer reach it. initially, they ignore the thread, aside by these and physics, or this, the best t, a nice. the thing about this experiment is that the animal isn't just moving

towards a food source. it has to learn a new movement else to get to the food. in this case, pulling on a threat and, and fraud and seeing some us and when does this hurt? i know solving this problem to obtain a reward is something that a b, or bumblebee has never had to do. and it's evolutionary history on the youngest fish to any of us, thomas go sisters most so will they figure out how to pull on the thread, the bumble bee number $81.00, give us it a try the after just 3 minutes, she gets it. and the others follow suit the conclusion, just like clever crows, tiny insects, know how to use a tool to get a reward is very impressive as we knew that people would be surprised.

although he still has many critics chit because research has revolutionized the way we look at bumblebees and other insects the there are around 1000000 insect species on earth. they are invertebrates. and for the most part, they have 6 legs and the 3 parts body, the one species that was domesticated by humans around 7000 years ago. this the honey be the, the

a be colony is also known as a super organism. it's energy mixed very complex behavior possible as a community they can achieve more than as individuals. together, these can for instance, regulate the high temperature by fluttering their wings, but keeping it at a constant $35.00 degrees is only possible with a sophisticated plan. to achieve this, select, these must position themselves in strategic places. every b has a clear task. the queen has a less glorious job than her title suggests. she lays pencil shaped eggs and inspects the brood combs. she can live up to 5 years. it will usually only mate once during her lifetime. drone bees patch from fertilized x and worker bees hatch from unfertilized a queen, calais, up to 2000 eggs

a day. 21 days after she lays the eggs a worker, b hatches. it's struggles to free itself from the brood come. but as soon as it does, it will have to get to work the. the workers set the tone in the b colony in summer, 30 to 50000 of them live together in the hive. after hatching, they take care of hygiene, air conditioning, and feeding the larva. later they guard the entrance against intruders. after 2 to 3 weeks, they turn into field beast and provide the community with nectar and poland. the mails or drones have huge ice in summer, 2 to 6000 drones live in the hive. their whole exist, its revolves only around one thing. during what's known as the natural flight,

they fly out with newly hatched young queens and meet with them. the colonies are strictly organized, as they have been for the last 100000000 years. the bees have an innate sense of how to construct the honeycomb. each of toggle cell has exactly the same dimensions . there's no need for engineers or construction plans. they simply know how to do it. the still anyone who studies honey bees intensively will ask themselves if they really do everything instinctively, thomas or that sky has kept these for 40 years. and through the a really a foundation advocates for a more natural approach. this means allowing bees to build their own honeycombs instead of using man made once his wife daniella shares his passion. how does it all fresh nectar look?

linden beast can fly up to 5 kilometers to collect the pollen which sticks to their bodies. a single b can pollinate up to a 1000 flowers a day. they bring the nectar back to the heights where it's stored and turned into honey within a few weeks. the field bees are the life insurance of the colony. if they couldn't find their way back, all the bees with star, that's why they have to be master navigators. been defeated and again, se, and when the bees have finished their 1st stage of life with their hiv tasks, they have to get to know the landscape and can stuff up until that point. they've only been inside the dark. hi lindsay. and so when the young bees blind for the 1st time, they fly out turnaround immediately and practically fly backwards practitioners to stainless. always looking at the hive while moving away because they shed it's line

uptown and down the single most important to this is how they get to know the coordinates of the heights. they find their way within a nate, navigation system being these have a great sense of time and follow the path of the sun even when it's cloudy. $50000000000.00 in their solar compass helps them keep their bearings so they can always find home. but can it also work if they're move to an unknown area in complete darkness? an experiment. 5 field bees are chosen at random, marked with yellow dots. they're placed in a dark box, and so they can't use the sun for guidance. the they are taking 3 kilometers across the countryside, 5, but the,

the market square is a foreign environment with hardly any flowers to attract the bees. the will the bees find their way home? the old. hi thomas. i released them 5 seconds ago. son was the ship. yes. could you stop? we've started the co signed us the it's possible that we've chosen these that still haven't learned enough about the landscape. this you can tell just by looking at them in your initial, their, she's making 2 circles like the other one. so as if she's getting her bearings, yes. to you radically. of course, a bird could also have eaten the bees

fly fast over 20 kilometers an hour and it's just one kilometer flying distance from the marketplace to the hive. the got their, their cool. all 5 bees find their way home as none of them made it in under 2 minutes, this low as time was 8 minutes. 40 seconds. this experiment dates back to the 19th century. when behavioral biologists jump on. brief thoughtless, invented it, but we've only just recently understood how they do it. like us humans, these have a virtual map stored in their brains. they can store landmarks

such as streams, houses, flowering meadows, pads, and their position in relation to the hype and flight. they can navigate home perfectly from a new location within their habitat the . it's an amazing achievement for a brain, just the size of a tiny grain of rice, the still, the brain has $1000000.00 neural connections. in comparison, there are 86000000000 nerve cells in the human brain. the process and store images, shapes, language and experiences among other a close relative. the bumblebee has

a similarly tiny brain, but their intelligence isn't just about the number of neurons. many insects have a letter like ventral nervous core distributed over their entire body. the different segments or ganglia are used to process sensory information and control motor activities in the head. several ganglia fused together to form the brain. neuron. stimulation begins in the antenna, which are also receptors of smell, taste, hearing, and touch the $60000.00 tiny pours on the antenna. i absorb sense from these all factory receptors. the stimuli go to the 1st all factory center, the antenna, lo, for the initial processing takes place. passing along to nerve cords consisting of many individual nerve cells, the stimuli reach what's called the mushroom body. presumably,

this is where the central learning and memory center is located. the shapes colors smells landscapes. the b process is all if this at lightning speed, they only have a few 100 neurons to perform this task. this tiny brain works very efficiently despite its size. the, when it comes to their behavior or a parents, most people see little difference between individual insects, the but couldn't this was, for example, be braver than her sister's. or the

she knows exactly how to cleverly free herself from this dangerous honey track. the at the university of de la failed in germany, biologist castle lena knew the studies, the personality traits of insects. she's chosen a particular kind of beetle for her research. the mustard diesel, the it's a tiny creature. the 1st glance, one beetle is like the next no different in shape, pattern or color. and it's behavior also appears the same. the insects have the

same mother, but only some have the same father. apparently, the only thing on their mind is eating and reproducing the, the 1st experiment looks at how willing the beatles are to take risks. testing their escape instincts, kind of holy and mueller starts by marking each one the name of the chief out and lessons. if we take our beatles and drop them here, it's meant to stimulate something like a bird dropping. and fetal, it's con, allowing the beetle to run away. so the experiment is testing the animal's flight reaction type. for many, the initial reaction is the same. they quickly flee from the center of the petri dish to the edge seeking protection.

but then there's a beetle that behaves differently. he takes a sweet time having a look around before a leisurely walk into the edge. what i find most interesting in this test is that you can clearly see that some individuals placed inside the petri dish are quick to screw, to the edge in the 1st week. and the 3 weeks later, when i re test that same insect, it's again very quick to run to the edge and some others that are slower initially will again be slower in the 2nd test for me, this consistency and individuality of lease needles. this was something i really didn't expect hookers from in bluff to find. the next experiment evaluates the beatles activity. each beetle moves around in a petri dish for 30 minutes. the movement patterns are captured by an evaluation software. red and yellow indicate a long stay in the same place. blue,

a shorter one and white. none at all. the variation with really huge. if you look at this because the children are very different states, most of the outside, right? yes, it stayed mostly outside on the edges, but it was all to exploiting in the middle. in control students is this one which was on the edge of the entire time, but was not on so exploring much scenes and environmental factors shape the personalities of beatles. just as in humans, but why are these differences so important? diversity in a population is a big advantage when it comes to adapting to threats and environmental changes. the, let's look at the university of tour and friends insect researchers or uncovering new discoveries along with puzzling new mystery one. that is confounding biologist joel munoz and his team has to do with how ear weeks care for their young.

the earwigs look after their eggs in a similar way to birds. the female protects the x and always stays close by. after 2 months, when the larva hatch, the female ear weight keeps protecting them against predators, or rather unusual behavior in the insect world. says she buys on what's going for was a good i may have a task updated here you can see the mother transporting or off spring to a new place with her mouth parts to get dressed as mother cats do when they are stress in the shuffle, they take the kittens and move them to another place. it is,

i'm not but couldn't the larva survive without the mother? why all this effort, the researchers discovered that the mother also benefits from the extensive time with her off spring. they help rid her of parasites. so is this behavior in 8? to find out, mooney 8 tries separating a mother from her newly hatched ear. week babies. later, these air weeks have all spring up their own. how will they now look after their babies? a few weeks later, the astonishing results are in the we showed that if a baby did not receive care, i as um, then when these baby become a new mother, the mother as a mother, that we provide less care as well. so it might be

a formal for learning. there is no reason to believe that there is no learning capabilities. all that the brain structure does not allow them to learn. the only limits is that we don't know, and this is something that we have to work on. 3 searchers are now investigating the entire life cycle of the solitary insects. if even ear weeks can learn, could there be other insects that have developed more complex thinking skills the small american town of in or over is a unique place for insect researchers. at the university of michigan, a special research area has been dedicated to a particular species of floss, edits, intelligent behavior. the it's, the paper was it builds its nests from wood fibers,

which it mixes with its own saliva to form a solid paste. when it tries, it turns into a very hard building material. the, the special thing about paper was, is that each one has a different face. know to have the same color and texture. the, [000:00:00;00]

the elizabeth tibbets has been researching paper was for over 20 years. compared to bees. paper was, are less organized. their colonies resembled more of a loosely organized roommate, arrangement than a superstructure behind the . this could have something to do with the fact that their faces are so different and that they can recognize each other. this would suggest there's a separate area in the brain for visual recognition and memory. previously, the only in sex known to have this capacity for bes. so you can see some was yellow . i wrote, some wasps don't sometimes a little black spots in the middle of their face and other was these are all the

same species use. they're all living together in a group. and you might wonder why, while studies have shown that paper was, can actually distinguish between the faces of their own kind. the reason that was to have individual face recognition is because individual ality is so important for loss. each was a different role on the colony. sometimes they're nice sometimes they're mean, sometimes they have cooperation. sometimes they attack each other. so knowing who's, who is very important for white paper wasps are active during the day. if a foreign last approaches the nest, they see that it's an unfamiliar face. the stranger is then threatened or attacked, and battle lines are quickly drawn. the in the botanical garden of the research institute to biologist,

emily lab studies insects and their natural environment. several nests serve as study objects. the emily love and elizabeth tibits have discovered that individual paper wasp have distinct personalities. several females lay their eggs in the same nest while bes reserved, and asked for only one queen. so no wonder that the social life of wasps is more complex than bees. the, some wasps are more affinity doesn't otherwise, they're more inclined to engage in social contracts and otherwise, and some of us are more aggressive, they're more inclined to engage and aggressive behaviors with each other. more fighting with was they don't know. we also find that was differ and how active they are. how much time do they spend moving around?

what is their propensity to explore new areas? it's the end of july. the paper wasps are caring for their off spring with a little extra help from the scientists. it's now peaceful in the nest after a turbulent spring, when several females thought to become queen. so these are a bunch of potential queens and they're checking out all the other queens. these 2 guys are fighting. you can see they're hitting each other with their and tenant in their front legs. the other officer just standing there watching. they want to see who wins the sites, so you can see they, they kind of get close to the looking at them and wondering who, who is going to win this fight. they're learning about each other and then their previous experience with those individuals influences their future contests, behavior. the researchers want to learn more, can paper last abstract. that is not only remember events,

but also analyze them and draw conclusions. could have paper was solve a mental exercise too complex for the brain of a human toddler. the 1st i'm going to look at them. they are dragon kyle and dinosaur. so if i tell you the dragon is a better fighter than the cow, and the cow is a better fighter than the dinosaur. then even if you never saw the dragon in the dinosaur interact, you'd be able to make a guess. you'd be able to say yes, the dragon is probably better than the dinosaur. so that's a very basic kind of transitive inference. using what you know dragon is better than kyle. kyle is bigger, better than dinosaur to make an inference for it. guess about a relationship that you don't know until recently,

disability to logically reason was attributed exclusively to humans. we now know that monkeys, birds, and fish can also reason. transitive inference is the ability to deduce unknown relationships from known ones. researchers are now carrying out the experiment with paper wasps, but instead of stuffed animals, they use colors. to begin with, they have to remember 5 different colors. in the next step, the insects have to put them in a logical order. the walls have to choose between 2 colors and 4 separate grounds. one causes small electric shocks. the other does not. but with the exception of the yellow and light flu, all other callers can either cause an electric shock or not depending on their pairing. in the 1st color pair, the wasp prefers the yellow it learned in the 1st round. that blue is associated

with an electric shock. it properly completed the task. through many repetitions they learn blue is more painful than yellow. purple is more painful than blue. green more painful than purple and light blue, more painful than green. they prefer the colors without electric shock. the colors are linked to pain following a logical principle, just like the experiment with stuffed animals. this allows the last to form a ranking. will that allow the was to correctly evaluate a color pair for which it has never been trained? which color does it prefer? blue or green? it decides logically, in favor of blue. how valuable is the ability to logically deduce the unknown for the everyday life of a paper was. so last place is organized so that everyone that they interact with isn't

a linux linear hierarchy from most dominant to lease dominant. and so if they have transitive inference, they can guess how strong otherwise start without actually needing to fight. they can say, oh, i beat susie in a fight last week. and today susie b jane. so my guess is i'm going to probably be jane. and that helps them live their life and manage conflict without fighting with everyone they need. the researchers observe to watch sites closely. this is a commonly observed scenario, unemployment and giving up before the fight is even started. this was, has probably concluded that she doesn't stand a chance it's not known whether any other insect species shows similarly impressive, logical skills. their relatives, the honey bees, were unable to solve this problem. i don't think that was i like overall g yes says you know, they're never going to paint a picture or write a book. but there are

a few things that it was really needs to be good at to succeed. they need to be good at face recognition. they need to be good at understanding relationships and in those particular areas. wasps are genius, the insects are intelligent. do they also have sensations and feelings like primates? how does a bumble bee experience paint for example? throw reflects or does it perceive the pain before deciding how to react? carl phone fresh, who discovered the communicative waggle? dance of bees at the beginning of the 20th century doubted that insects could feel pain at all. he carried out the following experiment. a bee was given sugar water. while it was drinking karl von fresh wood cut his body in half. he observed that

the be showed no pain reflects, but continued to drink for a few seconds before it died. for him, this was proof, but insects, black pain receptors. this message was that's of course nonsense, my boss to type because anyone who's ever seen someone's threat a grasshopper onto official or something similar will know that the insect is obviously not thrilled by that experience. and fights back to the best of its ability for these uh, a fall new. sure. the guys that is on session with mid north traffic viet. of course the same is true if you pass through a be by rolling it between 2 fingers. then you will very quickly realize that it naturally has an appropriate reaction to this, you know, traditional unconventional they actually, the recent studies have shown that many insect species have pain receptors, meaning they react reflexively to a stimulus. and so they can,

like humans, also tolerate pain, philosopher jonathan birch studies the sentence of animals. his research group discovered that octopi lobsters and crabs are very likely to cognitively perceive pain. these are invertebrates, like insects, and many kitchens. lobsters are thrown alive into boiling water and can survive for up to 3 minutes. in that time, that's the storm of nervous system activity. just as they would be with a human or any other animal dropped into boiling water. so it is not a quick message. it's not a humane much jonathan birches. findings have led to the welfare of these animals being taken into account in future animal welfare legislation in the u. k. the london based research team is now investigating whether insects also feel pain, which could afford them the same protection by law,

both in the u. k. and the european union. the issue is suddenly very current, not least since insects are becoming an increasingly important food source for humans. and st. lynn art, austria, andreas courts, free meal worms. his operation on 65 square meters, you $500.00 kilos of insects per month the . but what does animal welfare look like in the case of insect breeding? and how can insects be killed as humanely as possible? for some time now, the e. u has allowed the processing of meal worms and other insects into food. andrea's courts only gives me a worms high quality feed, so the keys to us move in. so in a box like this, so there around $10000.00 animals or defend,

they're actually only fed with by products from the food industry like we ran through or the east to get fruits and vegetables. here we have potatoes deemed unfit for the store, but perfect for us and fumes to fixed us with them. they do forget after 3 to 4 months, the larva are old enough for further processing. they're then sort 8 according to size. it's not hard to keep mill warms in a species appropriate way since they thrive together in a mass. but can even meal worms, which are classified as insects, the larva, cognitively perceived pain, and feel emotion, the in the show muscle and vito in production, i have to say that i never consciously noticed any pain or anything else, save still. and even the sorting process which involves a lot of sifting and so on. but i don't notice that they eat less or anything like

that. they just continue to behave as normal, comes from our i think the know he has thought about how to kill the animals as humanely as possible. he's opted for a gentle method that corresponds to the worms natural life cycle in winter. the worms are frozen at minus 20 degrees celsius. at some point, the metabolism stops working and they simply died. in stark contrast, industrial agriculture has a little regard for the life of insects. insecticides kill billions of insects, not only insects, the damage plants, but also beneficial ones. these bees have been poisoned with pesticides. their death lasts for minutes. whether the bees feel more than just a pain reflex has not yet been scientifically established.

the research group at queen mary university in london is currently investigating this with an elaborate experiment designed by behavioral biologist lars chip. the the biologist and his team set up a box with several feeding stations. the yellow ones contain a 10 percent sugar solution. the pink, a 40 percent sugar solution, even more attractive to the bumble bees. but there is a downside. the surface underneath that solution is heated up to $55.00 degrees def august. the question is whether the be when encountering in on pleasant heat stimulus, simply slowly from it reflexively. or whether they can learn to suppress their reflex if they get a particularly good reward is on this quote of the con. it's obvious that mammals

feel pain. they're nervous system is similar to that of humans. too little is known about the insect nervous system. such experiments can provide some clues of b notices. there is something sweet at the yellow feeding station. another has no idea that the sugar water in the pink container is even sweeter. although the heat stresses the bumblebees more and more fly to that, one of the study from 2022 shows the bumblebees accepts the pain and exchange for the sweet reward. as a diesel slower for mattress progression, this is, and what was i so this clever bumble be understood that there was a better food at the pink feeding place on sunday. and that she had to bear the pain by suppressing her normal reflex to flee on she got the treat from what is

actually a painful platform. so this means that the natural behavior of pulling back from this painful stimulus form can be suppressed as to what you know the booked in. the experiment is further evidence that insects may be sent and beings and that they adapt their reaction to stimuli according to their present situation. lars chit co works closely with philosopher jonathan birch, who brings a very different perspective the i think the $0.10 in says come to be quite an important one for animal welfare animal. because it's intended to capture all the feelings of animal might have. it's this capacity to have feelings which could be feelings of pain or pleasure, but also comfort. this comes the joy excitement. this is very useful to have this

concept because we don't just want to be talking about pain all the time. the statements sound for vall could of to many who conduct research on insects, he raises the question of whether insects have their own self or consciousness the what makes you, you know, what is that subjective in our world? i don't know if it was positive. i don't know how you'd even drawn gradient of it, but it's true, it has interesting philosophical implications and thinking about what animals are capable of and what they can think and how we treat them in class. may lack. and like the cute factor for a lot of people, but they're capable of these really complicated and sophisticated cognitive thinking about a question. yeah, there's

a lot going on in their mind. we now understand how clever and sensitive insects are at the same time. human activity is threatening many insect species with extinction, regardless of their intelligence and cognitive capacity. the see is the prima donna rena, in the suns many at the kind of in the fully done so it gets value clauses to disadvantage the dedication and experience. we're building the confidence of the c minutes on d. w for and channels instead of callous. central kenya,

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united states. the vision works for him. he wants to increase polarization. have to wait for trump's rise to power. usa to rights starts january 18th on dw, the . this is dw news, and these are our top stories. and you as president elect donald trump says he would not rule out using military force to gain control of greenwood. trump has repeatedly express his desire for the us to take over the arctic island in autonomy as region of us allied denmark, the governments of both greenland and denmark have rejected the us take over metro. c e o. mark zuckerberg says the social networking giant will scrap fact