The age-old problem for anyone traveling to multiple points is how to find the shortest route. Companies that transport raw materials, school districts with school buses, and delivery giants like FedEx and UPS are among those who use sophisticated computer algorithms to calculate the shortest - and therefore most efficient and least expensive - way to reach all the places they need to go.
It turns out that bumblebees are able to figure this out on their own.
Given a field of flowers, the most obvious route is to simply keep moving to the nearest flower. But that is not generally the optimal route, or even close. In a University of London study of 8 bees pollinating a group of flowers, it was found that after dozens of trips, the average distance flown by each bee reduced dramatically, from a total of 215 ft down to 126 ft.
Given that a bumblebee can travel up to 5 miles per trip, finding the optimal path results in a huge energy savings for the bee!
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