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Webinar: The Mind of a Bee
Webinar: The Mind of a Bee
Are individual bees uniquely intelligent? In this webinar, Professor Lars Chittka will explore bees' remarkable cognitive abilities as he delves into the sensory world of bees to illustrate how bee brains are unparalleled in the animal kingdom in terms of how much sophisticated material is packed into their tiny nervous systems.
This is an external webinar. A minimal donation is required to register for the event at Webinar Registration.
About the Topic
Most of us are aware of the hive mind — the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? Professor Lars Chittka explores the bees' remarkable cognitive abilities to show that bees are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. Dr. Chittka also examines the psychological differences between bees and the ethical dilemmas that arise in conservation and laboratory settings because bees feel and think. Exploring an insect whose sensory experiences rival those of humans, he explores the singular abilities of some of the world’s most incredible creatures.
About the Speaker
Lars Chittka is a professor at Queen Mary, University of London, where he founded a new Research Center for Psychology in 2008 and was its scientific director until 2012. He is a world authority on the behavior, cognition, and ecology of bumblebees and honeybees and their interactions with flowers. He discovered that bees can count, learn by observing each other and have a rich inner world of sensations and memories. Dr. Chittka is a recipient of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2014), an ERC Advanced Grant (2013), and the Lesley Goodman Award of the Royal Entomological Society (2006).
