Psychic Animals and Football-Playing Bees
Working in the field of animal behaviour means that around World Cup season it’s hard to avoid being sent links to so-called ‘psychic’ animals that predict the outcome of matches, such as Paul the octopus, Leon the porcupine and Anton the tamarin.
U.S. Sets Plan to Save Honey Bees and Other Pollinators
Read all the stories you want.
Bees Build Mental Maps to Get Home
The insects rely on more than the sun as a compass
Bees Living in Cities Are Building Their Homes with Plastic
It’s the first documentation of insects incorporating plastic trash into nests
Bees Crucial to Many Crops Still Dying at Worrisome Rate
In Bees, A Hunt for the Roots of Social Behavior [Slide Show]
By comparing the genomes of social and solitary bees, scientists hope to uncover the basis for communal behavior
The Beguiling History of Bees [Excerpt]
The first bees existed around 130 million years ago at a time when our own ancestors were small, ratlike creatures
Up to One Third of Honeybee Colonies Dies per Year in Europe
Survey finds beehives died off at higher rates in northern Europe
2013-2014 Winter Honey Bee Losses Are Likely To Be Large
Over the next few months we will hear news of this winter’s honey bee losses in North America. The news won’t be good. Although official loss tallies have yet to be released, persistently cold weather across the northern part of the continent has made the 2013-2014 winter an unusually difficult one.
Notes from some not bad science
The largest animal behaviour conference in the UK (the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour) was held last Thursday and Friday in my hometown of St Andrews.
Emotional bees
Whether animals feel emotion, and are capable of suffering, is a question the answer to which has far-reaching implications. I recently read Victoria Braithwaite's `Do Fish Feel Pain?', a question that I didn't worry about much until reading this book, but now bothers me a lot more.
Elephants Say “Bee-ware!”
What information is contained in the call of a mammal? Some calls might reflect the internal emotional state of the animal, like fear or anxiety, or they can refer to an external object, agent, or event, like the presence of a predator.