Originally published February 16 2006
Experiment finds bumblebees can recall human faces
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Adrian Dyer of La Trobe University in Australia and Cambridge University discusses his latest research, which has shown that bumblebees can remember human faces.
Don't be too proud of never forgetting a face: It turns out even a humble bumblebee can distinguish and recall different human faces, say researchers who have conducted experiments on the surprisingly canny insects.
The training consisted of showing the bees the very same series of black-and-white pictures of faces that are used to test human memory.
The newfound bumblebee ability is likely connected to their ability to recognize different flowers, says discoverer Adrian Dyer of La Trobe University in Australia and Cambridge University.
On the other hand, the discovery is one of a long string over the last decade about various animals which all point to one startling revelation: It doesn't take a huge human brain or even a mammalian brain to recognize individual human faces or do a lot of other complex tasks.
"The more we study these creatures, the more we find they have abilities like ours," observed insect vision researcher Mandyam Srinivasan of Australian National University in Canberra.
The larger implications of such a small number of neurons doing such complex tasks are intriguing, but not obvious, says Dyer.
There is the possibility, for instance, that someday humans who have experienced brain damage could borrow the bumblebee trick --- whatever the trick is --- to relearn facial recognition and other lost abilities, he says.
There are also big implications for the security industry and artificial intelligence, Srinivasan point out.
"People are still working on it for computer and security systems."
The bumblebee experiment implies there is a simpler solution to the problem that artificial intelligence researchers haven't yet hit on, he said.
Implications aside, Dyer admits that his new study does seem a bit strange at first glance.
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