Animals Can Be Given False Memories

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/animals-can-be-given-false-memories/?WT.mc_id=SA_HLTH_20150310

March 9, 2015 |By Karen Hopkin

Have you ever sworn that you left your phone in the car, only to find it in your pocket, or on your desk or, admit it, in the fridge. Or maybe you just dreamed that you left it on the dashboard and the memory was so real you had to check there first. Well, it happens to the best of us. And, if you believe the latest research, it can happen to animals too.

Okay, critters don’t misplace their electronic devices. But researchers are finding that memory can be as tricky for some beasties as it is for us. Take, for example, bees. These flying foragers are renowned for their ability to remember which flowers are best and where to find them. But it turns out bees can be bollixed.

Scientists trained bumblebees to expect a droplet of sugar water from two artificial flowers: one that was solid yellow, the other looking like an archery target of black and white rings. A few minutes later, the insects were allowed to choose between those two flowers and a third one that had yellow rings, a combo of the previous patterns. In this short-term test, the bees correctly showed a preference for the petals they’d seen had the sweet stuff.

But when challenged a few days later, the bees got bamboozled. They began selecting the yellow-ringed flower, even though it had never given them anything. It was like their memories had merged—or so conclude the authors in their paper in the journal Current Biology. [Kathryn L. Hunt and Lars Chittka, Merging of Long-Term Memories in an Insect]

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