Illinois entomologist Gene Robinson and his colleagues say this "enthusiasm" manifests itself when the bees perform their "waggle dances" (pictured) that communicate the location of food to other bees. These dances, full of highly specific movements, are performed in a "dance floor" area of the hive and show the other bees which direction to fly to get food. Usually bees only perform these dances when they've discovered a particularly choice or plentiful source of nectar. But bees on coke perform the waggle dances far more often, which Robinson interprets as altruistic behavior.

Scientists believe that the bees' cocaine-fueled dances are evidence that bees have a reward system in their brains that gets triggered by the drug. And this is where things get interesting.

One theory of altruism holds that it's a co-optation of the brain's reward system. The idea is that creatures evolved to behave altruistically when their selfish reward systems became involved in social behaviors. Robinson points out that behaving altruistically often excites the reward centers of the human brain.

Now he's proven that bees have a reward system in their brains too - and that they've undergone the same evolutionary shift as humans, using that reward system to fuel altruism.

Said Robinson:

This study provides strong support for the idea that bees have a reward system, that it's been co-opted and it's now involved in a social behavior, which motivates them to tell their hive mates about the food that they've found.

Bees also seem to go through withdrawal when they have been given cocaine regularly and then are deprived of it.

This means bee brains are closer to being like human brains than we thought, at least in some respects. More importantly, it means that cocaine makes us all nicer, more giving people - at least until we get sober again.

SOURCE: The Journal of Experimental Biology

Image via HowStuffWorks.com.

In the wild, bumble bees can fall prey to crab spiders, which are able to camouflage themselves to match the color of the flowers bees frequent. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London made mock flowers with sugar water along with fake crab spiders that either matched the flower's color or contrasted it. Two pinching arms padded by sponges grabbed the bees, giving them a good scare before they flew off in a panic. The bees quickly learned to avoid the hugging spiders whether they were camouflaged or not.

Things got interesting when the after-effects were studied. The bees were allowed to visit flowers with no spiders at all. Bees who had been attacked by camouflaged robot spiders were slower in their pollen collecting duties, acting nervous and distracted. They had apparently learned that a nearly invisible robot spider could be lurking anywhere, which would likely impact anyone's performance. Further research could provide insight into the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder.

Of course, there is one practical thing we can learn from this study right now, with no further research. And that is that NEARLY INVISIBLE ROBOT SPIDERS COULD BE LURKING ANYWHERE! Image by: Science News.

Robot Spider vs. Bee. [Science News]

We're still on the fence about this flick, but it looks marginally like Signs 2. Only this time the aliens are the plants that we've been sharing the planet with all these years. Looks like they finally got pissed off about all the pollution and the vegetarians. Watching this reminds us that Shyamalan's Unbreakable was a great movie that got slammed for being too slow and unexciting, but in retrospect is well worth a second (and third) viewing. However, Signs never stops us from asking why aliens would come to a world coated in something that is severely lethal to them. We hope The Happening doesn't have similar plotholes in it.