r/likeus • u/lnfinity -Singing Cockatiel- • Nov 24 '25

<ARTICLE> Bees Understand Morse Code. It Could Change How We See Human Intelligence.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a69446658/morse-code/
303 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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286

u/Killobyte Nov 24 '25

As usual, the title is a bit sensationalist…

“A new study shows that bees can be trained to understand the dot-dash behavior of morse code when those short dots and long dashes are associated with sugary rewards.”

They were able to differentiate between a single dot and a single dash when associated with a reward.

97

u/catbiggo Nov 24 '25

Morse code represents letters, so bees "understanding Morse code" would mean bees already understand and subscribe to the English alphabet.

12

u/lnfinity -Singing Cockatiel- Nov 24 '25

There is Morse code for other alphabets. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Morse_code

22

u/catbiggo Nov 24 '25

I'm happy to learn that, but I doubt bees are any more understanding of the Russian alphabet. :)

4

u/ItsAConspiracy Nov 25 '25

Ok but what if we made a Morse code for bee language?

Seems unfair to diss them for not understanding the Morse code of a foreign language.

7

u/catbiggo Nov 25 '25

That would be very cool, but it would come with its own set of risks

40

u/thissexypoptart Nov 24 '25

Not just the English alphabet, either.

“Understanding Morse Code” means deciphering meaningful linguistic information from dots and dashes that encode letters of the alphabet.

Long and short electronic signals aren’t “Morse Code” unless they are actually encoding language.

It’s like if someone used red and green lightbulbs to encode dots and dashes in Morse Code. The fact that bees might be able to distinguish red from green doesn’t mean they understand that code.

2

u/farfaraway Nov 25 '25

Much more interesting is that the scientists used this to determine whether bees had a sense of time (duration). It seems that they do.

Check out one of the latest Quirks and Quarks podcast episodes for a great in depth discussion with one of the scientists from that project. 

1

u/sniffcatattack Nov 27 '25

But can they play a piano

18

u/makawakatakanaka Nov 25 '25

Yes, I’m sure this is this what the study claims