February 4, 2010
strange flowers
Bees can learn to recognize human faces.
Rather than specifically recognizing people, these nectar-feeding creatures view us as “strange flowers,” the researchers say. And while they might not be able to identify individual humans, they can learn to distinguish features that are arranged to look like faces.
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I read an article a while ago describing a study on bees: The researchers mounted a load of life-size photos of human faces onto card, smeared some with honey and left the bees to it.
Later the same day they replaced the photos, this time with honey on none of them, and the faces in a different order. The bees returned to the faces that originally had had honey on them, leading the researchers to conclude that the bees ‘remembered’ the faces. I keep a hive, and when I first received the bees spent a lot of time going and sitting by the hive, singing to them and sometimes playing them my harp. After a cold silent winter I went back a week or so ago and sang to them. Some bees came out and flew around my head, I’d like to think saying ‘hi’…