Bumblebees make false memories too

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/cp-bmf_1021915.php


Public Release: 26-Feb-2015
Cell Press

It's well known that our human memory can fail us. People can be forgetful, and they can sometimes also "remember" things incorrectly, with devastating consequences in the classroom, courtroom, and other areas of life. Now, researchers show for the first time in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 26 that bumblebees can be unreliable witnesses too.

The new study is the first to explore false memories in any non-human animals, the researchers say. They now suspect that the phenomenon may be widespread in the animal kingdom.

"We discovered that the memory traces for two stimuli can merge, such that features acquired in distinct bouts of training are combined in the animal's mind," says Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London. As a result, "stimuli that have actually never been viewed before, but are a combination of the features presented in training, are chosen during memory recall."

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