Just like how humans make decisions based on their previous experiences, other species like animals and insects can learn to do this as well. This can include whether they had a positive or negative encounter, and what they learned from this event. They can decide where to go or where to avoid in order to gain certain rewards. These decisions can greatly benefit them in the future, whether it's trying to avoid an unwanted event from occurring or improving the efficiency of a certain task.
In the article “Mice learn to avoid regret,” Sweis et al. trained mice to make decisions in what they referred to as the restaurant row. These mice learned to decide whether to stay in certain areas in order to gain a food reward. The different feeding sites also included different food pellet flavors that mice had preferences over. If they entered the offer zone, they could decide to either continue to the wait zone or move on. They decided this based on the pitch that was played when they entered the zone. The pitch determined how long they had to wait. The mice learned how to avoid the regret of going to bed hungry by making decisions about how long they are willing to wait for their food. From their past experiences trying to gain the food, they learned what the tones signal, and they learned to decide to stay and wait or continue on for their food.
In the study “Big bumblebees learn locations of best flowers'' done by the University of Exeter, bumblebees can memorize where flowers are. Larger bees especially can decide to remember a flower’s location if they want to return to it. If the flower is rich in nectar, then the bee will actively try to take the time to memorize where the flower is located. They only retain this information if they think that it is important because these bigger bees are very selective. These bumblebees spend the time learning the flight path that will take them to the flower. Remembering this not only allows them to return to the flower that they found nectar-rich, but it also allows them to return to it at a much quicker rate after figuring out the best route to fly to the flower.
In both studies about the mice and the bumblebees, these species were able to make decisions that they believed would benefit them the greatest. This is seen with both the mice deciding where to go in order to gain the food that they want, and the bumblebees deciding which flower locations they want to remember in order to return later on. Just like how learning which tones will take a shorter or longer time to obtain food, or learning the flight paths to nectar-rich flowers, these experiences help species in the future. Whether this is not going to bed hungry or shortening their trip in search of nectar, their past encounters helped determine their decisions.
Citations
Sweis BM, Thomas MJ, Redish AD (2018) Mice learn to avoid regret. PLoS Biol 16(6): e2005853. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005853
University of California - Davis. (2017, June 8). Monkey see, monkey do, depending on age, experience and efficiency: Capuchin monkeys learn best-payoff ways to open fruit from others. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2021 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170608123706.htm
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