Smart Bees Continue to Draw Interest

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from University College London (UCL) have shown that bees are able to solve complicated color puzzles. In their study, bees were trained to find artificial flowers containing a nectar reward and colored in blue. Then they removed the nectar and put at random artificial flowers illuminated by yellow, blue, yellow and green lights. But wherever the blue flowers were, the bees continued to select them even if there was no longer a reward. These findings may soon lead to the design of sophisticated visual systems for autonomous robots."

Not Smart

[pavon]

The story here isn't that bees are smart - this is simple pavlovian association going on, not any sort of problem solving. The story is that they are able to recognize the color of objects that are complexly lit.

smart?

[Scrameustache]

They keep going for it after it stops paying? Funny, we hear that octopus are smart because they don't.

Someone confused "memory" with "intelligence" again.

So...

[Spytap]

In other news my dog can find and separate his medical pills even when they're complexly hidden in cheese. He has self-trained to reject the pill and spit it on the floor while still consuming the cheese.

This may possibly soon lead to complex robotic cheese/pill separators for robots that have colds.

Pre-emptive strike

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Imagine a beowulf cluster of apiaries with such bees.
2) a) Train bee
      b) ?????
      c) Profit!
3) I for one, welcome our new smart color bee overlords
4) In Soviet Russia, the bee sees *you*
5) I'm allergic to bees, you insensitive clod!
6) Trained bees? Won't somebody think of the children!
7) Netcraft confirms: the bees are dying
8) All your nectar are belong to bees.
9) Those are right-wing, neocon bees.
10) Bees teh sux! Wasps 4evar!
11) All I wanted was some frickin color-distinguishing bees with some frickin laserbeams!
12) In my day, we had bees that could distinguish flowers by taste or smell, at 100 yards, in a snowstorm. And liked it!
13) I don't see any b33#$(*&#$(*#& NO CARRIER

Re:Pre-emptive strike

[Spytap]

Missed one:
"Blue Bees: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Hmmm...

[rubberbando]

Now that they have found a way to get a bee attracted to something, maybe they should look for a way to repel bees from things like people and picnics!

Re:Hmmm...

[antdude]

You mean wasps, not bees. You forgot ants. :)

Re:Hmmm...

[Frizzle Fry]

Don't wear blue.

Smart bees continue to draw interest?

[fonetik]

5 Comments in 45 minutes? This must be some strange use of the word "Interest" that I was previously unaware of.

Re:Smart bees continue to draw interest?

[haydenth]

I think people see the name "Roland Piquepaille" and skip over the article.

Gratuitous family guy quote.

[kasper37]

And coming up next, can bees think? A new study confirms that, no, no they cannot.

Re:Gratuitous family guy quote.

[Slant675]

lol - more well spent government funding. :)

I do think that the research regarding this color recognition business was a good move though!

Re:Gratuitous family guy quote.

[Dmac1985]

Was waiting for someone to reference that quote. First thing that came to my mind when I read the article.

Other research showed

[PGC]

... bees have 'eyes' and are capable of 'sight'.

Yeah, and?

[CrimsonScythe]

I personally don't see what all the buzz is about...

Perhaps they're overreaching just a bit...

[ohmypolarbear]

... when they say that now we know how it all works.

... or, in fact, that "Bees solve complex colour puzzles." I think most readers would assume, when they see a title like that, that there would be some sort of, you know, puzzle involved in the experiment. I'll give them complexity; this is not a trivial vision task. "Puzzle" suggests, to me, something more like maybe learning to choose the middle wavelength of a set of three colors, at the very least. Maybe even logic or something.

...we didn't know whe