Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone

Abstract Culture refers to behaviours that are socially learned and persist within a population over time. Increasing evidence suggests that animal culture can, like human culture, be cumulative: characterized by sequential innovations that build on previous ones 1 . However, human cumulative culture involves behaviours so complex that they lie beyond the capacity of any individual to independently discover during their lifetime 1–3 . To our knowledge, no study has so far demonstrated this phenomenon in an invertebrate. Here we show that bumblebees can learn from trained demonstrator bees to open a novel two-step puzzle box to obtain food rewards, even though they fail to do so independently. Experimenters were unable to train demonstrator bees to perform the unrewarded first step without providing a temporary reward linked to this action, which was removed during later stages of training. However, a third of naive observer bees learned to open the two-step box from these demonstrators, without ever being rewarded after the first step. This suggests that social learning might permit the acquisition of behaviours too complex to ‘re-innovate’ through individual learning. Furthermore, naive bees failed to open the box despite extended exposure for up to 24 days. This finding challenges a common opinion in the field: that the capacity to socially learn behaviours that cannot be innovated through individual trial and error is unique to humans.