The Honey Bee brain is being studied by researchers who hope that it might provide a unique window into how the human brain works. While the honey bee has only one million neurons, the human brain is exponentially complex with 80 billion neurons.
The project focuses on honey bee intelligence which researchers hope can provide an informative comparative lens on the intelligence of other animals.
One of the basic questions is: “What is intelligence?” How is intelligence defined across species? How do we account for complex learning, complex navigation, complex memory , complex assessment? The honey bee provides some fascinating answers that will even impact the future of machine learning and robotics.
By Richard Sergay