Making a beeline for flower pictures

"Sunflowers," one of Vincent van Gogh's most admired paintings, is also the favorite for bees, according to a new study that explores the relationship between art and biology.

Lars Chittka, a behavioral ecologist from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at University of London, and installation artist Julian Walker, presented three colonies of laboratory bumblebees, which had never seen a real flower, with four reproductions of paintings.

"We chose two paintings that contained flowers, and two that did not," Chittka wrote in the current issue of the journal Optics and Laser Technology. . .

The team recorded the number of approach flights and actual landings the bees made on each of the paintings, over four-minute periods.

"When bees were confronted with paintings containing flowers, the majority of landings were indeed recorded on flowers," Chittka said.

From Discovery News. There's also more on the exact hues the bees preferred, and the levels of contrast. Too bad mosquitos aren't as easy to fool . . . .

Posted by David on August 19, 2005 10:07 PM