Bees follow polarised light through a maze: Bees' eyes can see the orientation of polarised light. Because sunlight passing through the atmosphere takes on a characteristic polarisation pattern that reveals the location of the sun, it has long been suspected that bees use their eyes' special photoreceptors to navigate when the sun is masked by cloud, says Mandyam Srinivasan of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Now he says he has "the ultimate proof" that this theory is correct.
He and his team created a simple "maze" of four tunnels arranged in a cross, and flooded two of the corridors with light polarised parallel to the length of the corridor, the other two with light polarised perpendicularly to the corridor.
No comments:
Post a Comment