Many animals can recognize objects they have previously felt but not seen, and vice versa. Whether invertebrates can generate cross-modal internal representations for such tasks is unknown. Solvi et al. trained bumble bees in the dark to discriminate between spheres and cubes, and then tested their visual discriminative ability for the same objects that could only be seen (in the light) through a clear barrier, and not touched. Bees spent more time with objects in the light that had been previously rewarded in the dark. Conversely, bees trained to visually discriminate the objects spent longer with the objects in the dark (tactile) setting. Thus, bees can use cross-modal integration to recognize objects.
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Solvi, C. et al. Bumble bees display cross-modal object recognition between visual and tactile senses. Science 367, 910–912 (2020)
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Bray, N. Bees can touch but not look. Nat Rev Neurosci 21, 245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0297-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0297-z