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14 Oct 2026
For centuries, we’ve ranked animals on a single ladder of intelligence. Bee researcher Felicity Muth shows why every species is brilliant in its own way.

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Are bees smarter than dogs? Does that question miss the point? UC Davis biologist and National Geographic Explorer Felicity Muth says the better question is what kind of intelligence an animal has. In meadows and labs, she trains bumblebees to learn scents and colors. She’s found that queens learn better than workers and will drink nectar they dislike when finding food is critical. Understanding diverse intelligences means stepping outside our human perspective.

Muth gave this talk at Intelligence Everywhere, an event hosted by Big Think and the John Templeton Foundation. The evening marked the launch of the John Templeton Foundation’s Intelligence Venture, a three-year, $60+ million exploration into the nature and future of intelligence. Grants will go to philosophers, biologists, physicists, computer scientists, and more across all six of Templeton’s funding areas.

Learn more about JTF’s Intelligence Venture here: https://www.templeton.org/ventures/in…

00:00 Think of a bee
00:50 Are bees smarter than dogs?
01:54 What a chickadee would call intelligence
03:47 What intelligence looks like in a bee
06:06 Studying wild bees
06:40 The overlooked bumblebee queen
07:29 A home lab during lockdown
09:56 The box wine test
12:04 So, are bees smarter than dogs?

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