My name is Mason Porter. I am a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UCLA. Previously I was Professor of Nonlinear and Complex Systems in the Mathematical Institute at University of Oxford. I was also a Tutorial Fellow of Somerville College.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Cooking Hornets
Wow, now this is pretty impressive: the bees in a colony attacked by a hornet bum-rushed the hornet and vibrated their wings to raise the temperature and cook the hornet alive. (These bees can tolerate higher temperatures than the hornet.)
It's true that I am not up on my webcomics. The text in my link corresponds rather closely to that in the webcomic, so I think the writer of that piece is up on them...
The temperature that the Japanese honeybees can withstand does seem to have been downgraded a bit, however. (The one in the Oatmeal --- which provides a bit larger gap --- seems a bit more plausible to me, given the presumed noise across individuals.)
The Oatmeal covered this a while back:
ReplyDeletehttp://theoatmeal.com/comics/bees_vs_hornets
Keep up on your webcomics, man! :-D
It's true that I am not up on my webcomics. The text in my link corresponds rather closely to that in the webcomic, so I think the writer of that piece is up on them...
ReplyDeleteThe temperature that the Japanese honeybees can withstand does seem to have been downgraded a bit, however. (The one in the Oatmeal --- which provides a bit larger gap --- seems a bit more plausible to me, given the presumed noise across individuals.)