Coming: A Robot Dancing Bee

Figure-8-shaped waggle dance of the honey bee

Zechariah 7:9-11
“Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true judgement, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear.”

Most listeners to Creation Moments know that honey bees communicate with each other through a complex dance. These dances are used by bee scouts who communicate the location, direction and distance of a new food source to other bees. Researchers have now learned that there is more to this communication than simply dance.

Scientists have discovered that bees can also hear the buzzing sounds that accompany the dance. More than that, scientists have been able to mimic those buzzing sounds, but they have not yet been able to reproduce the language that bees use. In order to further study bee communication, researchers in Denmark plan to construct a tiny robot dancing bee which can be used to recruit real honeybees to food sources – if they can learn the bees’ language.

In a previous Creation Moments program we spoke about the recent discovery of an ancient bee encased in amber. Scientists said that even though the bee dated back to the beginning of flowering plants, it was just like modern bees. The Lord’s message through all these lines of evidence – sophisticated bee society with complex communication and the evidence that it has existed since there were bees – is clear. If a robot dancing bee must be manufactured by intelligence, then the real dancing bees must also have been made by an intelligent Creator.

Notes: “Honey Bees Listen to the Dance.” Science News, vol. 135, p. 318.
Photo: Courtesy of Chittka L. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
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