Richard Collins: Bumblebees on a learning roll

At school in the 1950s, we were taught that only humans were capable of using tools writes Richard Collins. 

To think that other creatures could do so was heresy; traditionalists wanted to put clear water between the ‘brute beasts’ and ourselves. Animals, they conceded, had souls but, unlike our immortal ones, theirs did not survive death.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin referred to monkeys using tools. Nobody believed him until film footage appeared showing chimps breaking open the hard shells of nuts with stones. In due course, other primates gained admission to the tool-using club. Then the extraordinary cognitive abilities of dolphins were revealed.