Over a century ago, the German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler conducted what became a classic experiment. He suspended a banana to keep it just out of reach of a chimpanzee, placing a pile of boxes and crates nearby. The chimp soon stacked up the boxes, climbed them and grabbed the treat.

This was evidence, Köhler believed, of spontaneous problem solving by the chimpanzee; no training was required. It was the kind of thing that humans do all the time.

Since Köhler's early work, researchers have conducted similar experiments involving an out-of-reach reward and an object to stand upon in birds and elephants. And both have solved the problem successfully.

Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Turku in Finland wondered whether bumblebees — short-lived creatures with miniscule brains — might be capable of the same task. And in a paper recently published in the journal Science, he and his colleagues present evidence that they are.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/07/nx-s1-5846947/bumblebees-problem-solving-research