By Stephen Beech

Bumblebees have learnt to read simple Morse code.

A new study is the first to show that an insect can decide where to forage for food based on different durations of visual cues.

In Morse code, a short duration flash or “dot” denotes a letter “E” and a long duration flash – or “dash” – means letter “T”.

Until now, the ability to discriminate between “dot” and “dash” has been seen only in humans and other vertebrates, including macaques or pigeons.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London built a special maze to train individual bees to find a sugar reward at one of two flashing circles, shown with either a long or short flash duration.

For example, when the short flash – or “dot” – was associated with sugar, then the long flash – or “dash” – was instead asso

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