The perception of the passage of time is the key to the organization of work in the hive: bees know what time it is thanks to the temperature.
The superpowers of animals have been widely discussed on portals dedicated to science and technology. For example, a special mention was deserved by the ant that does not age. In that case it was a rare situation in which there are no negative aspects: loved by the other little creatures inhabiting the anthill, the age-proof specimens were even dispensed from working.
Among the sui generis behaviors of animals, also the mystery of the march of some elephants in China: no one knows exactly where the pachyderms are headed, but, between the apprehension of experts, the damage caused and a heroic rescue, these unusual nomads have perhaps become the first elephants in history to gain the status of social network stars.
Today we will talk instead of an unsuspected sense of bees. As it turns out, in fact, time would not be a human-only convention. Even the species devoted to pollination manages to capture the progress of the day.
Why it’s important for bees to tell the time
According to new research conducted by Manuel Giannoni-Guzmàn, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, the perception of the passage of time is a fundamental component of the bees’ work organization. These insects in fact live in societies organized according to a complex mechanism. To make everything work at its best, it is important to be coordinated as if all participants in the life of the hive had a watch on their wrist.
“If you are a bee, you can fly on every single flower, spending in this way a lot of energy, if you are lucky you can catch that moment when a flower is open and get more nectar,” explains Giannoni-Guzmàn. “The other thing you can do is learn what time of day those flowers are producing more nectar.”
How do bees figure out what time it is
The neuroscientist’s conclusions focus on the temperature of the hive, which is regulated by bees with different systems and which gives the sense of the passage of time to the little beings confined inside, those in short who never see sunlight (daylight is in fact one of the indicators of the passing of the days, even for bees).
So the temperature, together with some acoustic signals of the gatherer bees, those that venture outside, and the position of the sun for the invertebrates that collect nectar, offer, on the whole, infallible indications that make the bees move like so many perfectly synchronized workers.
Giuseppe Giordano