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Whenever humans hear harsh, repetitive sounds between 40 and 80 Hz—whether they are natural human screams or artificial sounds produced by fire alarms—our brains receive a clear signal: danger . These eye-catching sounds remind our brains and can prompt us to take various actions, from protecting something to fleeing danger.

Similar signals exist in the animal kingdom. Visual signs, the secretion of chemical substances, and sound cues are some of the common methods used by animals to communicate danger.

Focusing more on the latter, a group of researchers recorded the unique sounds made by bees for the first time to alert their hive members to predator attacks.

Heather Mattila, an associate professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College in the United States, and an international team of researchers conducted the study. They observed the alarm sounds made by honeybees to allow their spouses to protect their hive from hornet attacks. .

The wasp can wipe out an entire bee colony. A bumblebee uses its large mandible to attack and decapitate its prey, killing up to 40 bees per minute!

When observing an attack of this type, the researchers found that bees, after spotting a bumblebee directly outside the hive, would make a specific anti-predator pipe sound at a crazy speed. This sound looks a lot like a unique distress signal.

Describing it further, Matilla said: “These pipes share the same characteristics as the warning signals of many mammals, so when mammals hear them, they can immediately recognize that something is conveying danger. It feels like a kind of A universal experience."

These anti-predator pipes can not only remind the hive of the hornet, but also lead the bees to gather at the entrance of the hive to set up defenses, including forming a bee ball to collectively kill the hornet, and spreading animal feces around the entrance to repel the attacker. In previous studies, it was found that the latter was the first record of the use of tools by bees.

The researchers wrote in their paper: "[Bees] are constantly communicating with each other, whether it is good or bad, but the anti-predator handshake is particularly important at the horrible moment when workers must be summoned to defend the colony."

Interestingly, these newly discovered anti-predator pipes are completely different from the obvious sounds such as hiss and stop signals previously observed in bee colonies.

The recordings collected by the researchers showed that these voices during the active attack were noisy and fanatical, contrary to the usual recordings, which presented a calm and quiet sound. In fact, it was found that the level of hive chatter during the attack was eight times the normal level.

In general, these harsh, irregular and sudden changes in frequency have the same purpose as the alarm and fear screams between humans, as well as the panic screams made by primates and birds in response to predators. .

"This study shows how complex the signals generated by Asian honeycombs are," said Gard Otis, a colleague of Matilla and an emeritus professor of environmental sciences at the University of Guelph's Ontario College of Agriculture. "We feel that we just understand their communication methods. There is still a lot to learn."

In addition to the anti-predator whistle, the researchers also noticed that other kinds of bee behaviors are designed to alarm hive partners, such as buzzing, lifting their abdomen and running wildly, while exposing the pheromone-producing Nasonov. gland. Mattila and her research team will investigate these behaviors further.

The results of this study were recently published in the Open Science Journal of the Royal Society and can be accessed here.

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