Bees

In prehistoric times, the jawbones or tooth sockets of extinct rodents and mammals were nests for bees. Fast forward to today, bees are experiencing a massive global crisis; they have been dying off in massive numbers. Dwindling habitats and onslaught of pesticides account for a sharp decline in the colony numbers. Then came parasites and climate changes. Some beekeepers reported that 55 percent of their colonies had perished over the previous year – their worst losses ever.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons National Geographic put up the title "Secrets of the Bees" in the current magazine issue and their new docuseries, now streaming on Disney Plus. 

Sadness aside, we are now getting more fascinated by scientific discovery that bees are far smarter than we ever imagined. Even Karl von Frisch, the Nobel laureate who were famous for deciphering bees' dance language, had once commented that, "The brain of a bee is the size of a grass seed and is not made for thinking."   

When a team of scientists lamented that the parrots in a laboratory had failed a string-pulling test – a classic experience for testing animal's cognitive prowess to pull a string to retrieve a reward – one of them casually commented, "I bet our bumblebees could do that."

Everyone laughed.

But as the team soon learned, the bumblebees aced the examination by successfully pulling the sugar-coated flower using the attached string.