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Science Quickly

Bees Prefer Flowers That Proffer Nicotine

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2017

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bumblebees sought out flowers with nicotine in their nectar, and the drug appeared to enhance the bees' memories. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

0:33.6

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:38.9

We humans enjoy coffee and tea to give our brains a caffeine boost.

0:43.7

And bees sometimes sip nectar that naturally contains caffeine,

0:47.6

which seems to enhance their memory.

0:49.8

Now a study suggests that bees enjoy another familiar drug produced by plants, nicotine.

0:54.9

It turns out not just in humans, but even the bees seem to have difficulties quitting.

1:00.2

Lars Chitka, a professor of behavioral and sensory ecology at Queen Mary University of London.

1:05.1

Chikka and his colleagues studied bumblebees as they visited fake flowers that contained varying levels of nicotine.

1:12.2

Unnaturally high nicotine concentrations deterred the bees. But at real-world levels, the drug

1:17.5

attracted bees, and they even learned a flowers color faster if that flower offered a nicotine fix.

1:24.3

And sometimes bees paid a steep price for this preference.

1:27.1

They returned actually to flowers that had previously sold the nicotine, so to speak,

1:32.8

even if these flowers no longer contained nectar.

1:35.9

Which might give nicotine-pushing plants like tobacco an edge.

1:39.4

It provides these plant species with an unfair advantage over competing plants because they can

1:46.1

retain faithful services of pollinators even if they're offering suboptimal nectar in this case.

1:52.3

The results are in the journal's scientific reports. And if caffeine and nicotine have these

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