"In a new study, researchers report that bumblebees were able to figure out the most efficient routes among several computer-controlled 'flowers,' quickly solving a complex problem that even stumps supercomputers. We already know bees are pretty good at facial recognition, and researchers have shown they can also be effective air-quality monitors."
In this study done at Queen Mary University of London, bees found the shortest distance between man-made flowers. This task seems extremely simple for a bee and even us, but it took supercomputers days to figure this out. It's pretty amazing how our latest technology cannot match a bee when it comes to this act. This task is called the "traveling salesman" and has been an ongoing problem in computer science. It can be applied to other practical uses such as finding the shortest route between cities while visiting each city only once. The thought that supercomputers are having trouble with a practical problem baffles the mind. No matter how advanced our technology is, or our computing power of the latest computers, bees can still do things that these super computers cannot.
To test bee problem-solving, researchers Lars Chittka and Mathieu Lihoreau tested bees’ response to computer-controlled artificial flowers. They wanted to see whether the bees would go after the flowers in the order in which they were discovered, or if they would figure out the shortest route among all the flowers even as new ones were added. The bees explored the locations of the flowers and quickly figured out the shortest paths among them, according to a Queen Mary news release.
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