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Scientists Teach Bees How To Play Soccer (smithsonianmag.com)
Clint Perry, a biologist who studies the evolution of cognition in insects at Queen Mary University of London, and his colleagues have released the results of a creative new experiment in which they essentially taught bumblebees how to play "bee soccer." "The insects' ability to grasp this novel task is a big score for insect intelligence, demonstrating that they're even more complex thinkers than we thought," reports Smithsonian. From the report: For the study, published in the February 23 issue of Science, researchers gave a group of bees a novel goal (literally): to move a ball about half their size into a designated target area. The idea was to present them with a task that they would never have encountered in nature. Not only did the bees succeed at this challenge -- earning them a sugary treat -- but they astonished researchers by figuring out how to meet their new goal in several different ways. Some bees succeeded at getting their ball into the goal with no demonstration at all, or by first watching the ball move on its own. But the ones that watched other bees successfully complete the game learned to play more quickly and easily. Most impressively, the insects didn't simply copy each other -- they watched their companions do it, then figured out on their own how to accomplish the task even more efficiently using their own techniques. The results show that bees can master complex, social behaviors without any prior experience -- which could be a boon in a world where they face vast ecological changes and pressures.
FIFA 2010 World Cup.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZ
soon bee-terrorism will be born. Every scientific discovery has a good use and a bad use.
It's not a game without those drunk (on mead?) hooligan bees.
Man, my high school career councilor has a lot to answer for. Had I known I could be teaching bees how to play soccer, I'd have actually focused on my grades...or indeed, shown up.
But no, he was always like, "Stop drinking that" or "why are you at my house at 2am?" or perhaps most amusingly, "You can't be here, I have a restraining order".
He was a bit of a kidder.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
How will our soccer players earn millions of pounds per match now? The bees took their jobs!
expect bee stories to climax by May, exactly the same pattern as the past 6 years.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=bees
Is it repeatable?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Did they teach them how to dive for free kicks?
Now I ALMOST feel bad about my diabolical plot to eradicate the bumblebees, thereby causing worldwide famine.
*Slinks back to volcanic lair* Bwahahahaha!
Now we are going to have even more bees not pollinating plants, but sitting on couches, drinking beer, and hollering at the telly...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
So, will the bumble bees play in the next world cup?
Finally vuvuzelas will be appropriate at soccer matches.
This whole story makes me think: bumblebees have very primitive, simple brains, with comparatively few neurons (I've heard reports which mention one million) yet they master the task which seems impossible for any "AI" invented to this day. I've got a feeling a modern CPU with 4 billion transistors running at 4GHz (at least 4 million times faster than brains in nature which work at up to 1000Hz a second) and having 128GB of RAM can easily replicate all the processes running in the bumblebee's brain yet no one is doing that to the best of my knowledge.
What's more I've heard that even extremely primitive earthworms show signs of intelligence yet we cannot recreate their AI. That makes me feel true or general AI is still nowhere close and all this talk about "AI", is really a talk about smart algorithms which cannot reason or create (new solutions, new behavioral patterns, new ideas, new concepts) which is the staple of any true intelligent entity.
Is it still in time for the ignobel awards?
bickerdyke
Maybe they can teach coons algebra.
I for one welcome our insect overlords... far better than the ruling sovereign elite.
it's called football.
what the americans play is an "egg-carrying-hand-game"
Get the bees watching half naked, painted up and drunk and see if it really does help the bees on the field.
Most impressively, the insects didn't simply copy each other -- they watched their companions do it, then figured out on their own how to accomplish the task even more efficiently using their own techniques.
This has spawned a new theory that the bees are Japanese.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
More proof that biology is not science. The persistent underestimation of where life can exist, how intelligent various form of life are, questions of feeling pain or emotion ... it just signals that biology is nothing more than an observational practice with no first principles and deeply flawed fundamental assumptions about almost every aspect of the field.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
"Such unprecedented cognitive flexibility hints that entirely novel behaviors could emerge relatively swiftly in species whose lifestyle demands advanced learning abilities, should relevant ecological pressures arise."
Once they figure out we're not only the soccer coach, we're also what's killing them, our time here is up.
Did they also teach the bees to dive into the grass whenever another bee passes close to them?
Do I even have to say it? Bees clearly play Quidich!
Sure they know how to put balls into holes just covering them with royal jelly is the hard part
Too many science projects forcing the bees to do unnatural stuff.
Wouldn't want to be the ref for a match like this. "Red card -- AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
...Because they can.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Researchers are finding that neurons are not simple computational units but rather a network of computational units (e.g. dendrites performing pattern matching and filtering, multiple independent signalling, etc.). A lot more is going on at a lower level than previously thought (as is usually the case).
"Bees??? No! BEADS!"
"It was like that when I got here."
Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling nearly managed this several years ago. Here is the proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
On y va, qui mal y pense!
> demonstrating that they're even more complex thinkers than we thought,"
If you think the only things that exist are the ones we've been able to prove exist, then you're not a very good scientist.
Occam's Razor isn't a scientific device. It's a philosophical one. In the year 1000, Occam's Razor would have suggested the world was flat. It fulfills most or all of people's expectations, based on human knowledge and logic, discovered up till that point. And yet all of human history screams that we are still living in a era of "flat world" science.
One of those blind spots is our hubris in thinking that just because we can't communicate with animals and other species, that they're not actually intelligent creatures capable of abstract thought. For example, animal not being able to pass your tests, does not mean the animal is dumb. It's also possible that the tests are designed poorly from a lack of understanding of the animal.
is a clear demonstration of true human-level intelligence. And if you can teach them to stay afterwards for a couple of brews....
...then they can actually play bee ball.
This is excellent news. Because bees die shortly after fouling, this greatly reduces the opportunity for controversial calls by the referees. At last we can have truly reliable football matches.