This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

Have you ever sworn that you left your phone in the car only to find it in your pocket or on your desk or admit it in the fridge or

maybe you just dream that you left it on the dashboard and the memory was so real

you had to check there first. Well it happens to the best of us.

And if you believe the latest research, it can happen to animals too.

Okay, critics don't misplace their electronic devices, but researchers are finding that memory can be as tricky for some

beasties as it is for us.

Take for example bees.

These flying foragers are renowned for their ability to remember

which flowers are best and where to find them.

But it turns out bees can be buloxed.

Scientists train bumblebees to expect a droplet of sugar water from two artificial flowers,

one that was solid yellow, the other looking like an archery target of black and white rings.

A few minutes later, the insects were allowed

to choose between those two flowers and a third one that had yellow rings, a combo of the previous

patterns. In this short term test, the bees correctly showed a preference for the petals they'd seen had the sweet stuff.

But when challenged a few days later, the bees got bamboozled.

They began selecting the yellow-ringed flower, even though it had never given them anything.

It was like their memories had merged, or so conclude the authors in their paper in the journal

Current Biology.

Meanwhile, another team of researchers found they could manipulate the memories of mice while the animals slept.

As rodent skitter from here to there, what are called place cells in their brains record their pathways and locations.

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