Additionally, bumblebees will rely more on social cues when a task is difficult compared to when a task is simple. Ants will show conspecifics food sites they have discovered in a process called tandem running. This is considered to be a rare instance of teaching, a specialized form of social learning, in the animal kingdom. Teaching involves consistent interactions between a tutor and a pupil and the tutor typically incurs some sort of cost in order to transmit the relevant information to the pupil. In the case of tandem running the ant is temporarily decreasing its own foraging efficiency in order to demonstrate to the pupil the location of a foraging site. Evidence for Cumulative culture Studies in bumblebees have provided evidence that some insects show the beginnings of cumulative culture through the act of refining existing behaviours into more efficient forms. Bumblebees are able to improve upon a task where they must pull a ball to a particular location, a previously socially learned behaviour, by using a more optimal route compared to the route that their demonstrator used. This demonstration of refinement of a previously observed existing behaviour could be considered a rudimentary form of cumulative culture, although this a highly controversial idea. It is important to say that true cumulative culture has been difficult to show in insects and indeed, in all species. This would require culture accumulating over generations to the point where no single individual could independently generate the entire behaviour. Neural basis of insect foraging Role of mushroom bodies One important and highly studied brain region involved in insect foraging are the mushroom bodies, a structure implicated in insect learning and memory abilities. The mushroom body consists of two large stalks called peduncles which have cup-shaped projections on their ends called calyces. The role of the mushroom bodies is in sensory integration and associative learning. They allow the insect to pair sensory information and reward. Experiments where the function of the mushroom bodies are impaired through ablation find that organisms are behaviourally normal but have impaired learning. Flies with impaired mushroom bodies cannot form an odour association and cockroaches with impaired mushroom bodies cannot make use of spatial information to form memories about locations. Electrophysiological underpinnings of the cognition in different parts of the insect brain can be studied by various techniques including in vivo recordings from these parts of the insect brain. Mushroom body