PATTERN-RECOGNITION IN HONEYBEES - EIDETIC IMAGERY AND ORIENTATION DISCRIMINATION

The roles of eidetic imagery and orientational cues, respectively, in the discrimination of visual patterns by honeybees (Apis mellifera) were evaluated by training the bees to discriminate between patterns consisting of periodic, black and white square wave gratings. Training and tests with a number of different pairs of patterns revealed that bees use orientational cues almost exclusively, if such are present, and make use of eidetic images only when orientational cues are not available. On the other hand, if a pattern carries strong orientational cues, bees learn the orientation even if it is irrelevant to the discrimination task on which they are trained.