A bumblebee visits a flower, drawn in by the bright colours, the patterns on the petals, and the aromatic promise of sweet nectar. But there’s more to pollination than sight and smell. There is also electricity in the air.
Dominic Clarke and Heather Whitney from the University of Bristol have shown that bumblebees can sense the electric field that surrounds a flower. They can even learn to distinguish between fields produced by different floral shapes, or use them to work out whether a flower has been recently visited by other bees. Flowers aren’t just visual spectacles and smelly beacons. They’re also electric billboards.
“This is a big finding,” says Daniel Robert, who led the study. “Nobody had postulated the idea that bees could be sensitive to the electric field of a flower.”
Scientists have, however, known about the electric side of pollination since the 1960s, although it is rarely…
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writingthebody said:
God they are weird bees. just weird. They look sort of like big bugs crossed wiht moths. But so long as they do it, well good on them. And they are rather cute too.
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Brigid Jackson said:
they are very cute John, Nature’s only alchemists 😉 *Brigid
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...a Beehive here Inside My Heart said:
Adorable!! 🙂
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