LOS ANGELES — Think coffee's just the drug of choice for humans
looking to stay alert? Scientists have some eye-opening news for
you: Bees get a buzz when they drink nectar laced with a little
caffeine, and it supercharges their long-term memory. In
laboratory experiments, honeybees were roughly three times as
likely to remember a floral scent a day later if the nectar had
a minuscule amount of the stimulant than if was caffeine free.
They also were twice as likely to remember a caffeine-laced
scent a full three days later. Pretty impressive for an insect
that lives only a few weeks. The findings, published in Friday's
edition of the journal Science, hints that flowers may have been
capitalizing on the bitter compound long before humans built the
first Keurig machine. "It's the first evidence that I know of
where a plant is actually using a drug to manipulate the
behavior of an animal to its own benefit," said study leader
Geraldine Wright, a neuroethologist at Newcastle University in
England. Bees and other