Honey Bees Could Revolutionize Photography

la ciencia podría revolucionar la fotografía

Honeybees play an essential role in nature and in our society. In nature they are an essential link in the ecological chain when pollinating wild flowers. In our consumer society, they also play a very important role, because thanks to them our crops are pollinated and for lovers of raw honey, they sweeten our food. The bee is the only insect that elaborates a food that is extracted for human consumption.

If you want to learn more about bees, we recommend you read: Bees, honey and other curiosities. In addition, in our online shop or physical store in Las Rozas de Madrid we have at your disposal the largest selection of raw honeys from Spain and the world: thyme, manuka, rosemary, eucalyptus, heather….

Honey Bees Could Revolutionize Photography

After decades of struggles between various sectors of agriculture, beekeeping and the honey industry, a new sector is showing a growing interest in honey bees, the photography and video sector. Understanding how bees classify colors could be key to improving photography and video cameras. A new research published recently, could overturn the lucrative sector of photography in the investigation of these insects.

Study in PINAS magazine

The study recently published in the scientific journal “Preceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS) on how insects appreciate colors lets know how their discoveries can improve cameras. Knowing how bees’ brains work would help us to obtain a new way of processing color, and consequently, improving the quality of photos and videos.

With the objective of deepening an area of study that has little consensus among the scientific community and little knowledge, this group of scientists focused their research on how bees recognize flowers, how they know they have already visited it and their ability not to visit the same flower several times, even with changes in ambient light.  The most consensual explanation among scientists tells us that just like the human eye, bees also have a degree of chromatic adaptation, i.e., they recognize red in spite of lighting changes with lights of other colors.

How do bees use their two eyes?

After the data collected by that study, the research group believes that bees use their two complex eyes to perceive colors, but at the same time use their three ocelli (ocelli are simple eyes located on the top of their head), which could recognize ambient light and correct their perception of the colors they actually see.

The nerve endings of the ocelli have a connection to a part of their brain of the bee in charge of image processing, so the ocelli play a very important role in the visualization of images. This is the field that has aroused great interest to the industry of photography and video, because a greater knowledge of these natural processes of the vision of the honey bees can help in improving the operation of the optics of the current cameras of photography and video.

Photo 1: Lavender field in Guadalajara

Photography and video, how to use this studio

The photography and video sector is a very powerful market. Just think of all the devices that make up a camera; mobile phones, drones, robots and forget about the film industry. An improvement of the cameras would be of great interest to improve the recognition and processing of the colors in all the devices.

Nature is a source of knowledge. Knowing how they work gives us endless opportunities to improve our society, technologies and other key areas of life, such as health. One more example is this, that the brain of honey bees can give us keys for the improvement of photography and video cameras. For this reason, the extinction of bees or any other organism is a very bad news for society, as it is not known what important knowledge could be carried with his death.

 

Source:

Periódico El Mundo. Las cámaras del futuro podrían funcionar como el cerebro de una abeja http://www.elmundo.es/ 4 de Julio del 2017

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