Posted on 10/26/2008 7:23:50 AM PDT by Daffynition
An Australian and a Swedish researcher say they have proved honey bees are more intelligent than previously thought.
Professor Mandyam Srinivasan from Queensland University and Dr Marie Dacke trained honey bees to count by placing food at different markers.
Professor Srinivasan says he has also found bees can learn colours and smells and be trained to fly through complicated mazes.
"The more we look at these creatures that have a brain the size of a sesame seed, the more astonished we are," he said.
"They really have a lot of the capacities that we so-called higher human beings possess."
The scientists also say they have proved honey bees can count to four.
The put five markers inside a tunnel and placed nectar at one of them.
When honey bees were put in the tunnel, they flew to the marker with the food.
Professor Srinivasan says when the experiment was repeated without nectar the bees still flew to the marker that had contained the food.
"We find that if you train them to the third stripe, they will look subsequently in the third stripe," he said.
'If you train them to the fourth stripe, they will look in the fourth stripe and so on.
"But their ability to count seems to go only up to four. They can't count beyond four."
...as long as ya don't hit something, keep flying.....(whoa, worked a sweat up over that)
brain size of a sesame seed.. and more computing power than any of our top CPUs. very efficient too.. there is a great architect behind all this just as there is an architect behind the clock that keeps time for me. The Architect of Life: God
Does anyone have a stinging rebuttal?
Here is a quote from their work:
UM scientists have trained bees to detect land mines and pollution, but they haven’t stopped there. Now a new video released in time for Griz-Cat football week shows the flying insects can be trained to prefer the Griz over the Bobcats.The video was produced by Bee Alert Technology Inc., a University spin-off company formed to market UM’s new bee-training science. The video shows a bee flying through a maze -- entering holes with a Griz logo and avoiding those with a Montana State University logo -- as the UM Fight Song plays.
Larry Tarver, a computer software engineer with Bee Alert, said the bees are trained to seek out a sugar solution. He said Scott Debnam, the company’s senior field research technician and resident "bee whisperer," trained them to seek the Griz and avoid the ’Cats in about two hours.
“In fact, of the 60,000 bees in one hive, only one went for the MSU sticker,” Tarver said. “We let that one go.”
While the training is amusing, he said, it has a practical application of helping researchers understand how bees use both visual cues and smell to find a reward.
Here is a link to their amazing video of the maze they set up. Griz bees video on YouTube
That's where I lose track too - but it doesn't stop me from havin’ another drink or two - hic.
You are absolutely right! And the more I work with and study honeybees, the more sure I am of this truth.
Amen to that.
but why
The Seti project is a great effort, but I am convinced that until we learn to communicate with bees we need not go out of our solar system looking for entities to communicate with.
Having watched bees closely for many years I am convinced the communicate at a very high level and that communication is not just physical... the waggle dance or by chemical pheromones.
If they are so smart why don’t they learn to type and tell us what is happening to them.
I have not heard any disappearing bees stories lately.
Animal, especially birds and insects, do astonishing things but I think some of the attributes, accomplishments we give them say more about us that the subjects of our research.
Impressive demonstrated mathematical ability by these bees. We already know they are accomplished spellers.
In the buzz of honeybees you can hear “The fool hath said in his heart ‘There is no God.’” I can only imagine the wisdom one learns from daily work with humble creatures that turn sunlight into honey.
I wonder if the do-bee can count also wonder if non-productive female bees are called liz-bees.
Peter,
If you study honeybees, you will see many incidences where they demonstrate incredible intelligence and abilities that were not taught to them by man as they had these abilities long before man began beekeeping.
One example is their building of the comb in their hives. They have been building it the exact same way for eons. They build perfect little adjacent hexagons, slanting slightly upward at a degree used by all hives and the cell dimensions are consistent throughout all the colonies. Mathematicians have studied these structures and know they are the optimal in efficiency. They build with no tools of measurement other than their own instinct.
Another example is the "waggle" dance a forager does to tell the other bees how to get to the nectar source he has just found. The dance communicates perfectly the direction (angled degrees from the sun) and the distance to fly. Again the honey bee has been doing this dance long before man's intervention.
And one more example that comes to mind.... The worker bees cap off the cells where nectar is stored, when that nectar reaches the optimal and perfect moister-content.. thus declaring it "ripe" and ready to be called "honey". We can measure the moister with a refractometer instrument and always find that the bees were correct in their measurement.
There are many many more examples:
Believe me, I am not giving them nor imagining human traits in them. Their traits are their own and many times ones we humans would do good to emulate. There is an exception (LOL), one trait we humans don't want to copy is the relationship of the drones (males) to the workers (females).... their set up works perfectly in the bee-world, it would not be good in our world. If you are curious about what I am talking about, go read up on it.... it's fascinating!
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