Bees See Me
The honey bees’ ability to learn faces is unexpected. – Scientific American
Older beekeepers often tell me that their honey bees recognise them – now there’s research to support this. Honey bees’ brains are the size of a sesame seed with only 1 million neurons (we have 100 billion!) but bees can learn patterns, navigate, communicate, count, tell time, measure, and memorize. They can also recognise human faces. Honey bees don’t have distinctive ‘faces’ so this ability is more about their pattern-recognition skills (I wonder if it’s also about their close relationship with humans). Here’s how I might look to a bee with it’s many-faceted compound eyes (squint to see my face!):
The life of the bee is like a magic well: the more we draw from it, the more there is to draw.’ — Karl von Frisch
Tags: brain, honey bees, science