Frisch translated the meaning of bees' waggle dances, by which a hive compares incoming reports from individual bees about nearby food sources to make collective decisions. According to Alex Wright in his book Glut: mastering information through the ages, other studies have shown that while a single bee can retain a piece of data for up to six days, a hive, through this collective information management enterprise, can retain the same data for up to three months. This page offers a PDF download of Frisch's 1973 Nobel Lecture on the subject.
Slimejam
A weblog by Christopher Miles