Ants and Some Other Insects: An Inquiry Into the Psychic Powers of These Animals

by Auguste Forel

δ A blue flower, with a yellow center made from a dead leaf;

ε. A rose-colored piece of paper with a dry Dahlia disc;

ζ. A green Dahlia leaf (unchanged).

It was nine o’clock in the morning. I placed a drop of honey on each of the six artefacts mounted among the Dahlias. For a quarter of an hour many bees flew past, very close to my artefacts but without perceiving and hence without smelling the honey. I went away for an hour. On my return artefact δ was without honey, and must therefore have been discovered by the bees. All the others had remained quite untouched and unnoticed.

With some difficulty I next undertook to bring artefact α very close to a bee resting on a Dahlia. But the attention of the bee was so deeply engrossed by the Dahlia that I had to repeat the experiment four or five times till I succeeded in bringing the honey within reach of her proboscis. The insect at once began to suck up the honey from the paper-flower. I marked the bee’s back with blue paint so that I might be able to recognise her, and repeated the experiment with β and ε. In these cases one of the bees was painted yellow, the other white.

Soon the blue bee, which had in the meantime gone to the hive, returned, flew at once to α, first hovering about it dubiously, then to δ, where she fed, then again to α, but not to the Dahlias. Later the yellow bee returned to β and fed, and flew to α and δ where she again fed, but gave as little heed to the Dahlias as did the blue bee.

Thereupon the white bee returned seeking ε, but failing to find it, at once went to feeding on some of the Dahlias. But she tarried only a moment on each Dahlia as if tortured by the idée fixe of honey. She returned to the artefacts, the perception of which, however, she was not quite able to associate with the memory of the honey flavor. At last she found a separate piece of ε, which happened to be turned down somewhat behind, and began lapping up the honey.

Thenceforth the three painted bees, and these alone, returned regularly to the artefacts and no longer visited the Dahlias. The fact is of great importance that the painted bees entirely of their own accord, undoubtedly through an instinctive inference from analogy, discovered the other artefacts as soon as their attention had been attracted by the honey on one of them, notwithstanding the fact that the artefacts were some distance from one another and of different colors. For were not the Dahlias, too, which they had previously visited, of different colors? Thus the blue bee flew to α, β, γ, and δ, the yellow to β, α, δ, and γ, the white ε, α, β, and δ. Matters continued thus for half an hour. The hidden green ζ was not found, evidently because it was indistinguishable from the green foliage.

Finally one bee, by herself, having had in all probability her attention attracted by the three others, came to δ and fed. I marked her with carmine. Thereupon she flew to α and drove the blue bee away. Another bee was attracted to ε of her own accord and was painted with cinnobar. Still another bee came by herself to β and was painted green. It was now 12.30 o’clock. The experiment had therefore lasted more than three hours, and during this time only six bees had come to know the artefacts, while the great majority still kept on visiting the Dahlias. But now the other bees began to have their attention attracted by the visitors to the artefacts. One, then two, then three, and finally more new ones followed, and I had not sufficient colors with which to mark them. Every moment I was obliged to replenish the honey. Then I went to dinner and returned at 1.25. At this moment seven bees were feeding on β, two on α, one on γ, three on δ, the white one alone on ε. More than half of all these were new, unpainted followers. Now a veritable swarm of bees threw themselves on the artefacts and licked up the last traces of the honey. Then for the first time, after more than four hours, a bee from the swarm discovered the honey on the artefact ζ, which on account of its color had remained concealed up to this time!

As a pack of hounds throws itself on an empty skeleton, the swarm of bees, now completely diverted from the Dahlias, cast themselves on the completely empty artefacts and vainly searched every corner of them for honey. It was 1.55 P. M. The bees began to scatter and return to the Dahlias. Then I replaced α and β by a red and white paper respectively, which had never come in contact with honey and could not therefore smell of the substance. These pieces of paper, nevertheless, were visited and examined by various bees, whose brains were still possessed with the fixed idea of the flavor of honey. The white bee, e. g., investigated the white paper very carefully for a period of three to four minutes. There could, of course, be no such thing as an unknown force or attraction of odor, or brilliancy of floral colors. This fact can only be explained by an association of space, form, and color memories with memories of taste.