The Bee Boogie
It's a late Saturday night for me again, so I'm going to make this short as I really need some sleep. Never really realised how mentally draining typing a report in addition to doing work can be. Haha. Well, my misery should be over soon, once I hand in the report that is...
Anyway, on to the focus of today's post. If you have ever seen a bee hive or watched a documentary on bees, you maybe would've seen some of the bees dancing. If you haven't click here to visit a site with a little java applet bee hive.
Now the bee's dance was discovered by the zoologist Karl von Frisch and he theorised that the dance was "a code that shows the distance and direction of newly-discovered food". He even got a Nobel prize in 1973 for this discovery. However, this theory did not go without dispute as there were many critics who claimed that bees still did not fly directly to the food source after "seeing" the dance.
Surprisingly, this dispute lasted very long, and only recently did researchers prove that Karl was right all along. How did they do it? Well, they did it by tagging the bees with little radar transponder. Then the bees were put back into the hive and left to observe a dance by a scout bee. These tagged bees were then tracked as they made their way to the food source.
The result? Well according to researchers, after a few looping flights to get their bearings, "they (the bees) fly pretty much as the waggle dance predicts". So I guess that's another mystery (or dispute) solved in science. And in case you were wondering, most bees have a relatively short life span of 1 to 4 months, only the queen bee lives longer - 2 to 5 years. These are all female bees. The males incidentally live for only 40 to 50 days, quite sad huh...
Click here for the full article.
Anyway, on to the focus of today's post. If you have ever seen a bee hive or watched a documentary on bees, you maybe would've seen some of the bees dancing. If you haven't click here to visit a site with a little java applet bee hive.
Now the bee's dance was discovered by the zoologist Karl von Frisch and he theorised that the dance was "a code that shows the distance and direction of newly-discovered food". He even got a Nobel prize in 1973 for this discovery. However, this theory did not go without dispute as there were many critics who claimed that bees still did not fly directly to the food source after "seeing" the dance.
Surprisingly, this dispute lasted very long, and only recently did researchers prove that Karl was right all along. How did they do it? Well, they did it by tagging the bees with little radar transponder. Then the bees were put back into the hive and left to observe a dance by a scout bee. These tagged bees were then tracked as they made their way to the food source.
The result? Well according to researchers, after a few looping flights to get their bearings, "they (the bees) fly pretty much as the waggle dance predicts". So I guess that's another mystery (or dispute) solved in science. And in case you were wondering, most bees have a relatively short life span of 1 to 4 months, only the queen bee lives longer - 2 to 5 years. These are all female bees. The males incidentally live for only 40 to 50 days, quite sad huh...
One of the most enduring disputes in the world of dance has been solved by scientists in research published today.
Long before Strictly Dance Fever, bees apparently strutted their stuff to tell other hive members the whereabouts of nectar and pollen.
The "waggle dance", a code that shows the distance and direction of newly-discovered food, was first described by the zoologist Karl von Frisch. After some dispute, this discovery would earn him a Nobel prize in 1973.
Click here for the full article.
posted by CS at 11:22 PM
4 Comments:
hmm just wondering... if ya sleepy maybe can forgo posting yah?
Haha, quite true.
But I'm the lazy kind of person. If I forgo posting once, I think I will forgo posting many times...even when I'm not that tired. :P
Anyway, I normally wash my hair at night, so I would make a post using the time I'm waiting for my hair to dry... :)
Yup yup. Actually I post as an obligation to myself. ;) Whether ppl read or not is another thing, I just think that since I set my schedule as such I shd try me best to keep to it. Haha.
When the holiday's and school starts I'd probably change my posting schedule...
>>But I'm the lazy kind of person.
i think we would disagree with this... :P
anyway, i agree with RX
>>dun post at the expense of ur resting time :P
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