Bees May Aid in Cocaine Research

When we think of laboratory animals that are the subjects of experiments, many people think of guinea pigs or rats, but who would have thought that bees would make a perfect group of subjects? Entomologist Andrew Barron of Macquarie University in Sydney did a study that was published last month in the Journal of Experimental Biology that focused on honeybees. Barron and his team found through this study that bees’ response to cocaine parallels that of humans, a rather significant finding, according to the scientific world.

Cocaine’s effect on honeybees

Unlike many other insects that are typically killed by the neurotoxin, cocaine, honeybees actually feel rewarded by it. Barron’s team taught the bees to forage at a supply of sugar water, and then began to place small drops of cocaine on the bees’ backs while they were foraging, and then stood back and watched their reaction. Bees normally do a “waggle dance” after collecting pollen to communicate the food source to the rest of the bees. But after receiving the cocaine, these bees danced more enthusiastically than normal, which seemed to show that they overestimated the value of the sugar water. These bees weren’t doing a typical waggle dance, they were telling their fellow bees that there was something really good out there that they needed to try. The cocaine affected the bees’ reward center, causing them to become addicted just as humans do.

Withdrawal symptoms in bees

Barron then tested the bees for withdrawal symptoms and found that while most bees could be taught to distinguish between lemon and vanilla scents, those bees that had been on cocaine and then had the cocaine supply taken away had trouble learning the task. Humans also suffer mental impairment during cocaine withdrawal.

Research benefiting humans

Some of us might be wondering if this experiment has an application in the human world, and the good news is that it does. The most basic knowledge researchers are hoping to find through experiments like these is how cocaine works in the human brain. Humans and honeybees are both very much driven by rewards, and they both are altered in similar ways by cocaine. By studying the effects of cocaine on honeybees, researchers hope to gather information about the effects on humans also. Scientists are hoping to identify the bees’ neural pathways that are targeted by cocaine in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in human addiction.

Could it be that these honeybees hold the key to our addiction solutions? Only time will tell what all we can learn from these little insects, but the task of finding out could be a tedious one, and one that could take a while. These scientists will continue to make steps toward preventing addiction and hopefully one day we will have a solution.

Sources

Maugh II, Thomas Honeybees Can get Hooked on Cocaine December 27, 2008 Barron, Andrew, et. al Effects of Cocaine on Honey Bee Dance Behaviour December 26, 2008 Knight, Kathryn Honey Bees Succumb to Cocaine’s Allure

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