Honey bees selectively avoid difficult choices.

Photo: flickr/James DiedrickI don't know about you, but I totally avoid making difficult choices, particularly when there doesn't seem to be any way to determine the what the correct decision might be. Surprisingly, the study shown here suggests that honeybees might approach decisions in the same way. The experiments consisted of decision tests of different levels of difficulty: the "easy choices" were a reward (sugar, yum!) placed clearly above or below a visual reference, and a punishment (quinine, yuck!) in the other position. "Hard choices" were represented by the reward being offset but overlapping with the visual reference, and "impossible choices" were actually impossible to predict: "For impossible trials (so-called because objectively they had no correct answer and therefore were rewarded pseudorandomly), the centers of both targets were in line with that of the reference." Honeybees were allowed to choose to either be rewarded, punished, or to "opt out" and ...