Scientists in Britain have managed to teach bees to pull strings (线) to get to food and then pass on what they have learned to others in their colony (群体) — showing a high level of intelligence despite their tiny brains.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said the experiments, often used to test the intelligence of apes (猿) and birds, showed for the first time that some insects are up to the task, and can also pass skills on through several generations.

The findings add to the evidence suggesting the ability for “culture spread”— the ability to learn and pass on knowledge and skills — may not be exclusive to humans.

In the research, published in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, the scientists were able to train 23 out of a group of 40 bees to pull strings with their legs and feet.

The strings were attached to discs — or artificial “flowers”— containing food at their center but placed under a transparent (透明的) screen. The bees, spotting the food beneath the screen, learned to pull the “flowers” out by pulling the string with their legs and feet to be able to get to it.

From another group of bees given the chance to solve the task without any training, only two of 110 were successful.

Another group of bees was then allowed to observe the trained bees pulling the strings, and 60 percent of them successfully learned the skill. Finally, trained bees were put in colonies, and the scientists found the technique spread successfully to a majority of the colony's worker bees.

Lars Chittka, a Queen Mary University professor who guided the project, said the team is interested in figuring out the brain processes behind the bees' learning and teaching skills.

Raccoon dogs (貉), an animal native to Shanghai, have been spotted in nearly half of surveyed residential complexes in a suburban district of Shanghai, an investigation involving mass participation of city residents found.

Among the 50 surveyed residential complexes in Songjiang District, 22 have tracks of raccoon dog activity, with the number ranging between 1 and 50, and an average of 10.82 per residential community, compared to 6.02 per residential community ten years ago. The average population density (密度) of the animal is 1.08 per hectare (公顷). Seven residential complexes have recorded more than 10 raccoon dogs.

“We found that cat food and rubbish would significantly change the population density of the animal, leading to an abnormal increase,” said Wang Fang, a researcher at Fudan University’s School of Life Sciences. “Improper management of waste and cat food leads to one extra raccoon dog per hectare, doubling the normal figure. Meanwhile, the space of residential complexes and building layouts have no direct connection with the population density of the animal.”

Since 2019, a program was launched by the Shanghai Forestry Station, a conservation biology research team at Fudan University and the Shan Shui Conservation Center. It focuses on the research and protection of raccoon dogs, and the improvement of biological diversity. Various methods such as on-site visits, monitoring of infrared cameras (红外摄像机), the analysis of food habits, and GPS tracking are taken.

For the first time, a program involving the public, with participants nicknamed “citizen scientists,” started in June to study the movement of the animal and population, as well as people’s attitude toward them. Meanwhile, it drew more than 300 applications. In the future, the study will be expanded with more “citizen scientists” invited, the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau said.

Findings of an international team of researchers from Japan and China suggest that geese might have been the first poultry species to have been domesticated (驯养) by humans—as far back as 7,000 years ago.

Scientists have long held different opinions on the history of the domestication of birds, with a belief that it was chickens that were the first to be domesticated. In 2014, Chinese researchers reported ancient DNA taken from the earliest archaeological chicken bone discovery in China, suggesting chickens were domesticated in northern China as early as 10,000 years ago.

But the researchers behind the latest findings say that the 2014 study lacks firm evidence. In the new study, the team unearthed the archaeological site of Tianluoshan, a 7,000-year-old rice cultivation village in the lower Yangtze River valley in what is today known as East China’s Zhejiang province. They found a total of 232 goose bones at the site. The inhabitants of the village were hunter-gatherers.

The researchers used multiple approaches to study the bones, and found evidence of domestication.

Four bones were from goslings (幼鹅) ranging from eight to 16 weeks old, suggesting they hatched near the site. Geese were domesticated from wild geese. These migratory birds fly to northern Siberia to breed (繁殖) after the spring and then fly south for the winter, according to researchers from the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. They said the goslings were too young to have flown in from elsewhere. At the time, Tianluoshan did not have the conditions to be a natural breeding place for wild geese, so it follows that the goslings were born after domestication.

The researchers also analyzed the chemical makeup of adult goose bones, which contained evidence of the water they drank. Their analysis indicated that the adult geese also seemed to have been locally bred, for they were all roughly the same size. Carbon dating also showed that the bones belonged to geese that lived about 7,000 years ago.

Researchers say ancient DNA analysis is required in further studies to investigate which species were bred to become local geese populations.