Lars Chittka
@larschittka.bsky.social
Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology and author of The Mind of a Bee
Did you know that bee buzzes on flowers are rich in harmonics? We investigated how harmonics, which give musical instruments their unique sounds, affect buzz pollination. Very happy to see this paper published @jexpbiol.bsky.social Thanks @hfspo.bsky.social for the support! doi.org/10.1242/jeb....
Very much looking forward to the International Society of Hymenopterists' conference in Mexico City next week! www.hymenopterists.org/ish-2026-con...
Signing the Royal Society's Charter Book (created in 1663) earlier this month was a very moving experience. It contains the signatures of every other person we have learned about in school science lessons, and there was strong sense of "why on Earth am I here...?" Thank you so much to my team! 🥹
Where am I? Where was I going? What was I doing? Memories that guide orb web construction (by William G. Eberhard): constructionhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635726000719
sciencedirect.com
For your contemplation, from Edward Tolman 1948 "Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men"
I just discovered this rather intriguing figure from Kerfoot Shute (1899) "Organic Evolution"
Very excited to share our discovery of an engineering masterpiece from the Australian rainforest! In our latest paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social we report a hunting strategy in a spider, whose web outperforms every known biological catapult system.
New paper out with Iranian friends and colleagues: Aversive memory and extinction learning for noxious stimuli and aversive tastants in bumblebees. By S Sarlak, A Ashouri, SH Goldansaz, H MaBouDi, C Kleineidam, L Chittka. J Exp Biol (2026) 229 (10): jeb252223.
Acute stress modulates early visual perception and decision-making speed in bees journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-...
We were delighted that four of our Fellows have been elected in the recent intake of Royal Society Fellows - Professors @larschittka.bsky.social, @beverleycubg.bsky.social, @stuwest.bsky.social and Kathy Willis. Congratulations from all of us at the Linnean Society!
Four Linnean Society Fellows Elected to Royal Society
Four of the Linnean Society’s Fellows have been elected to the Royal Society in their 2026 intake.
buff.ly
Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees
Problem-solving using novel solutions without explicit training is often considered a hallmark of cognitive flexibility. We investigated whether bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) could solve a novel obj...
science.org
Excited by this new paper from Olli Loukola's team! edition.cnn.com/2026/06/04/s...
Are bumblebees as smart as chimps? A new problem-solving experiment makes the case | CNN
Scientists observe bumblebees rolling a ball underneath a flower to get sugar, showing complex problem-solving abilities.
edition.cnn.com
In case this wasn't amply clear already, here you can find out how insects beat AI 😉https://www.buzzsprout.com/2405788/episodes/19212921-why-houseflies-see-faster-than-ai
🪰 Why Houseflies See Faster Than AI - Heliox: Where Evidence Meets Empathy 🇨🇦
📖 Read: https://helioxpodcast.substack.com/archive?sort=newThrough self-motion, flies efficiently translate image motion into temporally-precise, predictive high-speed vision.The humble, infuriating, ...
buzzsprout.com
Mikko Juusola is interviewed on Chinese television about our recent paper on high-speed vision in flies: m.mgtv.com/b/820868/244...
Thank you so much to the @royalsociety.org for this wonderful honour and to all the wonderful young people who have, over the years, been bold enough to join our somewhat eccentric endeavour of trying to understand an insect mind! And a big thank you to the bees of course! 🥹🙏
The Royal Society@royalsociety.org · 2mo agoProfessor Lars Chittka FRS is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His work has transformed our understanding of animal intelligence by demonstrating that bees, despite their tiny brains, exhibit advanced cognitive abilities such as counting, attention and others. #RSFellows https://bit.ly/49xJuRy
At the BLOOM science and music festival in Copenhagen, there are giant tardigrades and I guess that’s all I need to say about just how magnificent the event is 😊
Male bumblebees seek mates by depositing sex pheromones. To study how ♂️🐝balance mate-seeking and feeding behavior @natacharossi.bsky.social, @larschittka.bsky.social et al. tracked ♂️🐝in an indoor flight cage and show that ♂️🐝prioritize mate-seeking over energy gain. academic.oup.com/beheco/advan...
Male bumblebees sustain mate-seeking by adjusting foraging to environmental conditions
Male bumblebees keep searching for mates even when food is scarce, adjusting how they forage to conserve energy. Using 3D tracking in a controlled environm
academic.oup.com
Looking forward to speaking at the BLOOM Science Festival in Copenhagen next week: www.bloom.ooo/english-prog...
BLOOM
Bloom is the biggest nature and science festival in Denmark with over 20.000 participants each year. The festival has free entrance and takes place in…
bloom.ooo
On #WorldBeeDay, we’re revisiting a #BIGIDEAS conversation that explored just how extraordinary insect minds can be. 🐝 Investigator @gallseeker.bsky.social, and author of The Mind of a Bee @larschittka.bsky.social, explored how insects reshape the world around them. Watch the convo: bit.ly/4mD7rfm
Exploring the hidden minds of insects at BIG IDEAS
David Stern, Ph.D., and Lars Chittka, Ph.D., speakers at the Stowers Institute’s Spring 2026 BIG IDEAS lecture series, reveal how aphids and bees are…
stowers.org
New paper out! url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/NJAHCB6RxF... @oupacademic.bsky.social @behavecol.bsky.social @larschittka.bsky.social
Male bumblebees sustain mate-seeking by adjusting foraging to environmental conditions
Male bumblebees keep searching for mates even when food is scarce, adjusting how they forage to conserve energy. Using 3D tracking in a controlled environm
url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com
How to begin a proper introduction to a scientific paper. 😉From: Rau, P., and Rau, N.L. 1929. The sex attraction and rhythmic periodicity in giant Saturniid moths.Acad. Sci. St. Louis. Trans. 26:83–221. Have a lovely weekend everyone!
New paper just out! We tend to think of rapid movement as something that blurs vision but for houseflies this does not apply. They turns fast motion into an advantage, reorganising visual signals so efficiently that perception keeps pace with behaviour almost perfectly www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Synaptic high-frequency jumping synchronises vision to high-speed behaviour - Nature Communications
How insects maintain precise vision during rapid motion remains unclear. Here, the authors show that motion-driven photoreceptor dynamics and synaptic high-frequency jumping enable hyperacute, minimal...
nature.com
Very interesting to attend this conference on interspecies communication as a member of the science advisory group of the project: www.santafe.edu/events/inter...
Interspecies: Decoding, Translation, and Interpretation
This three-day workshop is a follow-up to the April 2024 event, “Imagining Criteria and Frameworks for Decoding Communication in Other Species.” Whereas that meeting was largely aimed at developing cr...
santafe.edu
