2 min readJul 10, 2026 06:15 AM IST First published on: Jul 10, 2026 at 06:15 AM IST Among the elements that constitute the homo sapiens’ self-definition, there is one that is often ignored. Human beings have an unending capacity for narcissistic conceit. The “inner life”, it has long been believed, is the province of very few animals. With reluctance, people acknowledge that “higher mammals” — elephants, primates, dolphins and some whales — are worth empathy. For lowly insects, though, the fascination is rarely with the individual. The ant colony and beehive are marvellous for their complexity, but the ant and the bee are merely constituents of a collective. It turns out that behind their exoskeletons, bees might be a lot more complex than people thought. A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that in certain settings, bumblebees react to certain tastes in seemingly similar ways to some mammals, including human babies — they seem to like sugar water, and retreat from saltiness. Researchers concluded that bees may have …