Timing in Color Learning
One of von Frisch’s students, Elizabeth Opfinger, observed that bees would learn color when approaching a feeder. Menzel took this question further: when do bees register and learn color? He wanted to know if bees registered color before, during, or after receiving their sugar-water reward. In order to explore this intriguing question, Menzel displayed the color beneath a rewarded dish at different stages of the honey bee feeding process: during approach, feeding and departure.
The outcome of this experiment revealed that bees register color during both the approach and feeding stages of the exposure process. In order for a bee to accurately remember a given color, it must be present for approximately five seconds in total. Although it varies slightly, Menzel and his colleagues found that bees usually remember best when the stimulus is present for about three seconds during the approach and two seconds after landing and beginning to feed.
Read more about this topic: Bee Learning And Communication
Famous quotes containing the words timing, color and/or learning:
“A great man always considers the timing before he acts.”
—Chinese proverb.
“‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their color is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”
—Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)