3 ms·

I've seen this BS reporting before. The original paper, I believe is this: http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/657042 http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/657042 Mone

• jeza 16y ago
  Wow, how many different paths is that? Somewhere around 256 at a guess? So a computer could work out the optimal solution in microseconds purely by testing all possible combinations. Though I'm guessing the bees don't just sit there at the start working through all possible routes they're going to take that day, it's surely something that they work out as they go along. Maybe that's where they gain some efficiency advantage. Though four flowers is hardly likely to be a real world scenario for bees. Surely bees would encounter tens of thousands or more flowers in a field, so it is there performance here that ultimately counts. Though perhaps four flowers is better for determining how they make their actual decisions?