Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered that looking at honeybees in a colony in the same way as neurons in a brain could help us better understand the basic mechanisms of human behaviour.
Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered that looking at honeybees in a colony in the same way as neurons in a brain could help us better understand the basic mechanisms of human behaviour.
The team studied a theoretical model of how honeybees decide where to build their nest and viewed the bee colony as a single superorganism which displays a coordinated response to external stimuli – similar to the human brain. The study concluded that the way in which bees “speak” with each other and make decisions is comparable to the way the many individual neurons in the human brain interact with each other.
Previous research has shown that the brain of humans and other animals follow certain rules known as psychophysical laws. Single brain neurons do not obey the laws, but the whole brain does. Similarly, this study found that even if single bees do not obey these laws, the superorganism, i.e. the bee colony, does.
The study, published in Nature: Scientific Reports, which has fundamentally found that superorganisms may obey the same laws as the human brain, is important because it suggests that the mechanisms that generate such psychophysical laws are not only happening in brains as previously thought. This discovery will enable scientists to better understand the basic principles that generate such laws by studying superorganisms such as bee colonies, which is much simpler than watching brain neurons in action when a decision is being made.
Read more at University of Sheffield
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