Attention across different senses in foraging bumblebees

What is it about?

How can bees simultaneously avoid predators and choose rewarding flowers? It is difficult to attend to two tasks at the same time, but it is sometimes possible to do this if the tasks involve different senses. You might, for instance, listen to music and draw at the same time. We studied whether bees could use smell to differentiate flowers while looking out for predators. We found that having tasks involving different senses helped them do this. They, however, failed to perform both tasks at the same time using only vision. This shows that their attention can be independently allocated to different senses.

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