LottoLab projects: Synaesthetic Human perception Bumblebees Synthetic worlds Media: Books, television, radio, popular press

Back

 


Research on bumblebees has the potential to explain the biological principles that are common to all visual animals.

Bumblebees – like primates – see in colour using three receptors; they can recognise surface colour under different conditions of illumination and even experience the same illusions of colour that we see. Unlike us, however, their neural anatomy is highly stereotyped, can be raised in completely controlled (and therefore quantifiable) environments and their (flight) behaviour can be accurately measured and the activity of their neurons can be readily recorded. Here we are using complementary series of comparative physiological and behavioural experiments that aim of explain how insect colour vision – and by extension all natural brains – overcomes image uncertainty, information which will provide an important foundation for rationalizing the more principles that enable robust behaviour more generally.