Bees have an inbuilt SAT NAV: Insects don't use the sun as a compass, but build a 'mental map' to navigate, study reveals

It was thought that bees rely on the sun’s position to find their way home



Scientists from the University of Auckland altered bees' body clocks to show that they could find their way back from an unfamiliar environment

Study suggests bees create a 'mental map' like humans and other mammals instead of solely relying on the position of the sun

Discovery is remarkable because bees' brains are tiny and lack structures such as the hippocampus, which is used for navigation

A study has claims that honeybees (pictured) rely on a built in 'sat-nav' system to find their way home

It has been claimed that bees solve difficult maths problems and that their tiny brains are better than computers.



And now a new study suggests that the insects rely on a built in ‘sat nav’ system to find their way around.



Honeybees make ‘mental maps’ of their home ranges allowing them to pinpoint destinations miles away from their hives.



While humans, sharks and even pigeons are known to use this technique, it was popularly thought that bees rely solely on the sun’s position to find their way back to their hive.



Dr James Cheeseman of Auckland University in New Zealand, said: ‘Only 50 years ago the claim any non-human animal had a cognitive map was deeply controversial because it suggested a computational theory of mind. The question of whether insects do is a frontier question.’



To come up with their finding, scientists captured and anaesthetised honeybees and shifted some of their circadian (body) clocks by six hours to disorientate them.



They fitted them with tiny radar transponders to track their movements after releasing them in a different location.



The researchers reasoned that if the bees did rely on the sun as a compass, then the alteration to their body clocks would disrupt their ability to find their way home.

They found that when the bees with altered body clocks were let out in a field in Brandenburg, Germany, they returned with similar speed and accuracy as those that had not been put to sleep, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although Hv1a/GNA was carried to the brain of the honeybee (stock image), it had no effect on the insect, which suggests the highly selective spider venom toxin does not interact with the calcium channels in the bee

BEES BEST COMPUTERS AT MATHS

Bees can solve complex mathematical problems which keep computers busy for days, a 2010 study showed.

The tiny insects learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers discovered in random order.

Effectively, they are capable of solving the 'travelling salesman problem' - unlike any other animal known besides humans, scientists said.

The classic conundrum involves finding the shortest route that allows a travelling salesman to call at all the locations he has to visit.

Computers solve the problem by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the one that is shortest.

Bees manage to reach the same solution using a brain the size of a grass seed.

Artificial flowers were used to test bee behaviour. The researchers wanted to know whether bees would follow a simple route defined by the order in which they found the flowers, or look for the shortest route.

After exploring the location of the flowers, bees quickly learned to fly the best route for saving time and energy.

Dr Cheeseman said: ‘The results suggest bees may navigate by a mental terrain map in addition to learned sun-compass directions.’



It is known that mammals can navigate areas by making cognitive maps - a mental representation of landmarks like rocks, trees and rows of bushes. But it was unclear as to whether insects possess the same skill.



‘The results we report imply the bee is like mammals and birds in that its brain constructs an integrated, metric cognitive map,’ he said.



The discovery is remarkable because the brain of the bee is tiny and lacks structures such as the hippocampus, which is used in navigation.



But the insects must somehow construct a type of map that includes information on directions, distances, diverse landmarks, feeding sources and terrain features to permit the complicated computation of an efficient journey home.