Scientist gets a buzz out of brainbox bees

The very small brains of bees are still good enough to recognise different human faces, new research has discovered.

Adrian Dyer, an Australian scientist working at Cambridge University, has trained bees to recognise different human faces by rewarding them with a sucrose solution when they visit a particular photograph.

Other photographs visited by the seven bees bore only a bitter quinine solution and the bees, despite having brains the size of pin heads, were able to remember the sweet faces, even when the pictures were mixed up and after a gap of two days.

Five of the seven made a beeline to the sucrose faces even when the solution was removed, ruling out the possibility that their sense of smell was responsible.

Mr Dyer, 38, of the university's department of plant sciences, said that research had been going on into whether or not the human brain required specialised regions to process faces reliably.

"I thought it would be interesting to know whether a miniature brain would be able to solve a face recognition task," he said, adding that he chose bees as they were more motivated and hard-working than other insects.

By David Sapsted

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