A photo from open sources
The so-called “Mexican wave” is consecutive actions of spectators in a crowded stadium when groups of people sitting next to each other get to their feet, screaming and raising hands, then sit back.
If you look at it from a distance, you get the impression that the stadium actually runs a “live wave”.
One would think that such a metachronal (i.e. sequential, not synchronous) rhythm is peculiar exclusively sports fans, but it wasn’t there. It turns out that “Mexican waves” are also created by giant honey bees, living in East Asia.
These insects form impressive open-air families. air, and the length of each such cluster of hundreds of thousands of bees makes up several meters. This makes them vulnerable to predators such as wasps and hornets that are always averse feast on other people’s larvae. Fortunately, honey workers possess an amazing protective mechanism that is not only very effective, but also truly mesmerizing.
A photo from open sources
This natural mechanism is “flicker,” which is a unique strategy in the animal world when large clusters of bees alternately raise their abdomen, creating the effect of running through all over the swarm of waves. How thousands of insects manage to do so well-coordinated action, remains a mystery to science, however, studying this phenomenon for more than 15 years, scientists came to the unanimous conclusion that we are talking about a protective mechanism, and fulfills it – the collective mind, which also possess, for example, ants.
Austrian naturalist Gerald Kastberger from Graz Since 2004, the University has been exploring with its colleagues behavior of giant bees in the forests of India and Nepal. Eventually experts concluded that “flicker” allows insect colonies create the effect of one big living creature, frightening off so way of predators. Seeing the “living waves”, wasps and hornets cease perceive a bee swarm as an accumulation of many small organisms and do not dare to approach this “huge monster”.
Interestingly, “flicker” appears only when potential enemy breaks through a conditional 50-centimeter in diameter “safety zone” around the bee colony. Highest precision with by which honey insects define this boundary, again confuses scientists. Or rather, to say this: collective intelligence insects, although it explains all this, but what he himself represents by itself, its capabilities are a complete mystery to science …
Insect bees
