The Mind of a Bee

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Some stray findings: Bees can recognise a human face (I knew that). Bees are warm blooded and seek out warm nectar when needed to warm up – like having a cup of hot tea when feeling cold (didn’t know that).

The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka | Goodreads The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka | Goodreads

The time that insects were seen as little machines, incapable of complex thought, emotions, and learning, is far behind us. We can wish for no better guide than Lars Chittka for an accessible introduction to the wonders of bee intelligence.” —Frans de Waal, author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Chittka proves that bees have tremendous levels of intelligence, and quite possibly consciousness. Seriously.. think about that. If insects are clearly capable of so much, what does that imply for the multitude of life that surrounds us, which we honor so rarely! The is the prototypical 5-star book: approachable and entertaining, while profound and fascinating. It's great! Most of the book is great stuff that I was expecting: experiments and findings about bees. What I did not expect is the biographical bits about historical bee researchers. These are very short, so absolutely don't distract from the bee content. But they are also amazing! Never a boring figure. Everybody was a freed slave, fighting the nazis, ending up in an insane asylum, or something else equally gripping.Lars Chittka presents work ranging over many decades exploring how bees sense the world, learn, solve problems, and communicate. The purpose of the book is to suggest that bees (and likely most insects and animals of all kinds) have at least a basic form of consciousness, and are capable of many of the same feats of general intelligence we associate to human beings. This is accomplished by sharing study after study, discussing not just results and methodology, but also what the findings contribute to the big picture, and a bit of the history and context around the people doing the research.

The Mind of a Bee | Princeton University Press The Mind of a Bee | Princeton University Press

Bees need to sleep and will rest several hours each day during the eternal daylight of polar summer.The Mind of a Bee makes for fascinating reading. The book’s tight structure and numerous illustrations make it accessible . . . . [And I have] been thoroughly convinced by Chittka that bees are anything but little automatons."—Leon Vlieger, Inquisitive Biologist The time that insects were seen as little machines, incapable of complex thought, emotions, and learning, is far behind us. We can wish for no better guide than Lars Chittka for an accessible introduction to the wonders of bee intelligence.”―Frans de Waal, author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka | Waterstones The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka | Waterstones

i liked this author because of his appreciation for other entomologists + he seemed like he really understood the need for relationships between scientists. good on him.Bees don’t have eardrums, so they don’t hear like humans, but they do hear. A new human that has never gone to a heavy metal concert hears 20-20,000 Hz. Bees feel air movements with their antenna, sensing sound waves ranging from 20-500 Hz, and can feel hive vibrations with their feet. Like Rhianna said, “let the bass from the speakers run through ya sneakers.” (Or was that Bee-yoncé?) The book’s bees astound; so too the clever humans who study them."—Robert Eagan, Library Journal, starred review Lars Chittka’s The Mind of a Bee is a mind-blowing presentation of scientific evidence and insight showing beyond any reasonable doubt that bees have awareness, memories, basic emotions, intelligence, and personalities—and that what we are doing to them and their world has not just practical but moral implications.”—Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words and Becoming Wild