Chittka has spent his career designing experiments for bees, and the results keep being unreasonable. Bees count. They recognize human faces. They learn to roll a ball into a goal for a sugar reward by watching another bee do it, then improve on the method. They play with wooden balls when there’s nothing in it for them. They can be pessimistic after a bad experience. All of this out of a brain with under a million neurons. He walks through how bees see color and polarized light, how they navigate, how the waggle dance actually works, and ends where the evidence points, which is at the question of whether a bee feels anything.
The Mind of a Bee