Lars Chittka @LChittka Twitter profile

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Lars Chittka

2 years

And ... it's out! After immaculate conception and a 5 year gestation period, this baby was finally born last night. According to Amazon, it weighs 1.35 pounds. Father and baby are healthy and happy.🙂

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 month

Yesterday at 2pm the first honeybee (Apis mellifera) in this species’ evolutionary history managed to pull a string for reward. They are much harder to train than bumblebees, though!

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

The string-pulling bees are at it again in my lab @QM_SBCS @QM_Psych

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Today’s my birthday aaaand … the first time I am holding a copy of my book 😊 @PrincetonUPress

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 months

Our new paper is out today in @Nature , showing that bumblebees possess the cognitive capacity for some of the key ingredients of cumulative culture, previously though to be unique to humans

Bumblebees socially learn behaviour too complex to innovate alone

Nature - Bumblebees can learn how to open a two-step puzzle box by observing another trained bee, indicating that these insects can use social learning to acquire a behaviour too complex to...

www.nature.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

Thanks to heroic efforts by my team over many years, especially Joe Woodgate, Vince Gallo and Jason Lim, we can now finally radar-track bees' flight in 3 dimensions and see what bees see along the way. @ERC_Research @QM_SBCS @QMUL

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

You might think you’ve seen this before from our team… but these are MALE bumblebees, trained to pull strings by Mai Morimoto and Yoshi Aso in just a few hours !

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

For years, the New Scientist addressed me as Queen L Chittka - probably an AI conflation of my name and address. Now some automatism has added “Her Royal Highness” 😊

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

@NatGeo How often do scientists have to say it? The domesticated honeybee is not under threat anywhere. On the contrary, managed honeybees are a threat to wild bees. Please do not do this.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

7 months

Look, I wrote 3 books 😉 - just kidding, the only news here is that The Mind of a Bee now exists in paperback and will be available in stores next week

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

To my Brit friends today: bank holidays are so called because John Lubbock, entomologist & banker, introduced them so he could take days off his bank job & study insects. He discovered UV vision & the pheromone language of ants, among other things. What will you discover today?

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

African-American Charles Turner was the first scientist (to my knowledge) to report individual learning curves for animals (in this case ants, in 1907)

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

After having experimented a bit with ChatGPT I am convinced that this bot has been around for at least 15 years, and has since written ALL university "vision statements", ALL "impact statements" etc in grant applications and about 50% of consortium type multiauthor papers.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Happy to share that I've been elected as a fellow of the AAAS. Apparently I will even get a medal - that will be the first one for me since the plastic bronze medal I got at in a 1km race at age 10 (there were only 3 participants) 😊

Queen Mary professor elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

www.qmul.ac.uk

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

Ooou - look what's appeared on the Princeton University Press web page :-)

The Mind of a Bee

A rich and surprising exploration of the intelligence of bees

press.princeton.edu

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Happy to see the proofs for my book The Mind of a Bee, out at @PrincetonUPress 5 months from today

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Working with the gorgeous Bombus ephippiatus at @UNAM_MX , the first thing we discovered is that they are very good at opening doors and escaping. The second is that they sting first and ask questions later, if at all 😊

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Our latest piece for Science (with @rossi_natacha ) about the discovery by Shihao Dong et al. that elements of the symbolic communication system of honeybees must be learned from seasoned dancers. Let me know if you'd like a pdf

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

A radar-tracked #honeybee #drone flight from the hive to a drone congegration area and back; actual flight is 9:21 minutes. Video by Joe Woodgate; see

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

One is pleased when one is being addressed in an appropriately deferential manner

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

I am pleased to report that this book is now available for pre-orders @PrincetonUPress

The Mind of a Bee

A rich and surprising exploration of the intelligence of bees

press.princeton.edu

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

6 years

One of Joe Woodgate's psychedelic heat map videos, showing how a bumblebee gradually optimises its flight path between a hive (bottom) and 5 feeding locations, as revealed by harmonic radar tracking. Published today in @SciReports

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Published 30 yrs ago today, in J Comp Physiol A. We fed lots of flower reflectance spectra into computer models to identify the optimal colour vision system - this turned out to be exactly the set of UV, blue and green receptors that are implemented in flower-visiting bees. 1/n

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 months

Bees and chimpanzees learn from others what they cannot learn alone

Nature - Animals can socially learn a task they cannot solve alone by innovation.

www.nature.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

Among the many important breakthroughs of my team is the fact that bumblebees love Lego bricks (so long as they're full of sugar water. But then they love ANYthing that's full of sugar water). 🙂

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

The mysterious killer wasp of Bosque de Chapultepec claims two further innocent victims

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Oh cool #1 New Release in Entomology on Amazon (not sure how they quantify that though)

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

“Good heavens” - “It is like wading through ice cream”. From a referee comment to the editor of Vision Research about my manuscript, sent to me by fax in 1993. Happy Easter everyone!

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

After 18 months gestation, I finally delivered this baby (my 1st book manuscript) to @PrincetonUPress . Deep breath. Ok. And now to work on the 6598 unanswered emails in my Inbox. @wiko_berlin @QM_SBCS

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 month

@HazemToutounji No it’s not physical strength… I think there are quite profound differences in cognition. Stay tuned 😊

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

Lifelong radar tracking of bumblebees reveals highly individually different spatial foraging strategy. Bee A only visits two patches over her life; Bee B never settles on one patch at all. From Woodgate, @JamesMakinson et al:

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

New paper in @CurrentBiology with 11 attempts, by as many scholars, to define "cognition"

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

Haha - I always thought that honeybees are nowhere near as smart as our tool-using bumblebees, but this is pretty good ;-)

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

With respect to the recent @ukhomeoffice rejection of my permanent residence application, I must say I feel happy & thankful for the universal support I have received from my school @QM_SBCS , my uni @QMUL & also from colleagues around the UK. I love it here and I am staying!

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Our new paper is out today in @NatureComms - eat the right bacteria to boost your memory. Works if you're a bee 🙂

Gut microbiome drives individual memory variation in bumblebees

Nature Communications - Whether gut microbes drive cognitive differences in natural populations of animals remains unknown. Here, Li et al. demonstrate a causal link between increased symbiotic...

www.nature.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

Coming soon in @CurrentBiology - 10 clever people, plus me, have a go at defining the term #cognition

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

It was a beautiful experience to meet the @DalaiLama at a conference on animal consciousness in Dharamshala, to hear his messages of compassion for all humans & all other animals, and take inspiration from his call to make the world a better place. - And now he has a new book🙂

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

John Lubbock, born on this day in 1834, describing his experiment on drunken ant strangers and friends

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

Charles H. Turner, pioneer in animal cognition

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Happy to hold the Dutch translation of The Mind of a Bee in my hands- 1st of 10 translations planned so far. @PrincetonNature @PrincetonUPress

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

New review out about "Social Cognition in Insects" in @TrendsCognSci . Thank you @rossi_natacha for excellent coauthor work and to the journal and referees for allowing such freewheeling speculation!

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

Some lovely news in mail today- been elected as a member of the @Leopoldina , Germany‘s National Academy of Sciences

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

Bumble bees damage plant leaves and accelerate flower production when pollen is scarce

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

9 days

New paper on the string-pulling bumblebees now out in Insect Science:

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

Four years ago I arrived at the little paradise that is the Institute of Advanced Study @wiko_berlin in Berlin to begin work on my book “The mind of the bee”. So it feels appropriate that I return here to do the final edits of the copyedited manuscript

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

6 months

A 1965 letter to Ernst Mayr by Karl von Frisch, lamenting that "today's zoological youth gets more and more stuck in cell structures and chemical details" and worrying that they are losing the connection to the living animal and plant world.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

#Bumblebees and #honeybees can learn from each other which flower colors are most rewarding (bees carry #RFID chips for individual identification)

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 month

@VK_Ulaganathan In bumblebees, yes, it can spread by social learning (see below). In honeybees, we're only starting...

Associative Mechanisms Allow for Social Learning and Cultural Transmission of String Pulling in an...

Bumblebees can be trained to pull strings to obtain a reward, can learn to string pull through observation, and can culturally spread string pulling throughout a colony.

journals.plos.org

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

6 months

The Pineapple Science Award trophy has made its way from China to London! So proud to have won this prize with our multinational team led by Samadi Galpayage, Cwyn Solvi, Amelia Kowalewska, Kaarle Makela and HaDi MaBoudi, for our work on bumblebee play. @QMUL

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

9 months

Lovely article by @lalakat about the great Charles Turner, one the founding fathers of the field of animal behaviour and cognition, with some thoughts from Charles Abramson, Janice Harrington and myself:

Charles Henry Turner’s insights into animal behavior were a century ahead of their time

knowablemagazine.org

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Look at the magnificent t-shirt I got from @SamadiHGD who recently finished her PhD work on the question of whether bumblebees play

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 months

We have new animals in the lab! Looking forward to exploring the mind of a cricket 😊

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Hahahaha "crazy hippy fringe ideas" - bees, Steve Buchmann and I in today's Guardian / Observer

‘Bees are sentient’: inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers

‘Fringe’ research suggests the insects that are essential to agriculture have emotions, dreams and even PTSD, raising complex ethical questions

www.theguardian.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Love the cartoon that @PLOSBiology drew up for the new paper by @alicedbridges et al. about bumblebee social learning of puzzle box opening techniques @QM_SBBS #MindofaBee

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

8 months

Insect intelligence | Princeton University Press

Insect intelligence

You don’t need spaceships or psychoactive drugs for journeys into alien worlds. I invite you to come into the cockpit of an insect, and view the world through its strange senses. You will discover...

press.princeton.edu

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

The Mayans had perfected the art of beekeeping over 2000 years ago. In this image from a pre-Columbian Mayan book, you can see a rather grumpy beekeeper with a hive, and a frontal portrait of an equally grumpy bee on the left.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

15 days

Interested in doing postdoctoral work in my lab in London, working on insect behaviour, learning and cognition? Have a look at this fellowship opportunity, and get in touch:

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Here's Miss Green 915 for you. Once you enable recognition of individual bees, they reveal their "personalities", with individually different work schedules, learnt preferences for particular flower locations and plant species, and differences in learning ability and temperament

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

7 years

1 postdoc position & 3 PhD studentships available from 2017 to work on radar-tracking of bee orientation - pls share / email if interested

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 months

Bumblebees show each other how to solve complex puzzles

Puzzles that bumblebees cannot solve on their own can be cracked with help from another bee, adding to research on the transmission of culture among insects

www.newscientist.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

A very interesting online conference on animal behaviour and cognition this August - please retweet

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

10 days

Congratulations to the authors on this exciting study!

Royal Society Publishing

@RSocPublishing

10 days

Evidence for socially influenced and potentially actively coordinated cooperation by bumblebees: #ProcB #openaccess @LoukolaOlli @AAntinoja

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Congratulations to @matilda_gibbons who passed her PhD viva yesterday. Her work on bee sentience has major implications for insect welfare. Way to go, Tilda! And a big thank you as well to examiners @KristinAndrewz & @elwood26 & @eli_versace as co-supervisor (foto R. Rickitt).

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

6 months

Paris, here I come 😊 (thank you to @EttorePatrizia for the invitation!)

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

“Lord of the Bees” 😂 An interview in German news magazine @derspiegel - let me know if you would like a pdf

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 year

Haha if I have to read one more grant application that says "we study insects because their brains are simple"... here are just two neurons from a fly brain.

Amy Robinson Sterling

@amyneurons

1 year

of many beautiful things that grow on planet earth DPM neurons from @FlyWireNews @uni_matrix , 2nd longest pair in their brain

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 months

Bumble bees ‘play with balls for enjoyment’ via @Yahoo

Bumble bees ‘play with balls for enjoyment’

Findings add to growing evidence that bees’ minds are much more complex than previously imagined, scientists said.

uk.movies.yahoo.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

There is a common misconception that #insect brains are simple because of their low #neuron numbers. Here is ONE such neuron (from a paper by @ACPaulk ). Now imagine one million of these wired together, with perhaps a billion synapses. Simple...?

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

New paper with Joanna Brebner @turlminwebs in @CurrentBiology about the remarkable discovery by Sridhar Ravi et al, that #bumblebees have an appreciation of their own individual body dimensions @QM_SBCS @QMUL

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

Like humans, bumblebees display "false memories" where stored information of flowers seen in the past is blended together to form memories of patterns they have actually never seen before (image by Ray Crundwell); @QM_SBCS

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

7 months

My first article in Italian 😉

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

2 days to release and already a bestseller in 3 categories - psychology, insects and ... erm ... arachnids 🙂 @PrincetonUPress

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 months

One dream for a scientist is to discover something that changes the textbooks. Big congratulations to @SamadiHGD - her work on insect play has found its way into this new biology book! @QM_SBBS @QMUL

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

8 months

I'm excited to give the Karl von Frisch lecture at the 50th Nobel Prize Anniversary Ethology Colloquium in Vienna later this year. Von Frisch was my scientific great-grandfather so this means a lot.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

What is cognition?

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

I'm super happy to be inducted to the German National Academy of Sciences @Leopoldina this week, as one of 45 newly elected members, and to give the main evening lecture at the event on Wednesday:

Der Verstand der Bienen

Vortrag: Mi., 11. Mai ab 17 Uhr, Jägerberg 1, 06108 Halle (Saale)

www.leopoldina.org

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

I suppose against a background of general geopolitical insanity, we can all use some cheerful news 🙂

Samadi Galpayage

@SamadiHGD

2 years

Our paper is out! Do bumble bees play? @CwynSolvi @AmeliaKowalewska @KaarleMakela @HaDiMaBouDi @LChittka @QM_SBBS @QMULSciEng

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

My new piece for @ScienceMagazine about the remarkable discovery by a Swiss team that bees bite plants to speed up their flowering @QM_SBCS @QMUL

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 months

Our new entitled "Bumble bees' food preferences are jointly shaped by rapid evaluation of nectar sugar concentration and viscosity" is now out in Animal Behaviour:

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

An edited excerpt from my book in the Natural History magazine, with photos by the wonderful Alex Wild @Myrmecos - email me if you'd like a reprint.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

For anyone who still thinks that insect brains are simple, check this out :-)

Michael Winding

@WindingMichael

3 years

Sneak peek: We will soon be releasing a complete insect brain connectome! With both brain hemispheres mapped, we can study how the left and right sides of the brain communicate #Drosophila #neuroscience

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

Zoology professor has released rock album dedicated to BEES via @MailOnline

Zoology professor has released rock album dedicated to BEES

The band, Killer Queen Bees, is made up of zoologist Lars Chittka of the Queen Mary University of London and musicians Katie Green and Rob Alexander.

www.dailymail.co.uk

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

6 months

My favourite scientific figure of all time. From Shuckard WE (1866) British Bees

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Mind of Bee currently #1 new release in “Emotional Mental Health” on Amazon USA… not really the topic of the book, but hey, I promise it will make you feel good about the diversity of minds on our planet 😊

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

To those of you enjoying the Monday off in the UK today - did you know you owe bank holidays to the insect passions of a 19th century parliamentarian...? Read all about it in my book, The Mind of a Bee 🙂

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

Written 15 years ago by a (then) 7 year old relative, when an adult close to them informed him about referee comments on a rejected grant application. I need to look at it every time I get another one rejected. Like, today.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Do insects feel pain? The evidence out there is at least consistent with this. More (experimental) work from our team to follow in few weeks. Watch this space...

Royal Society Publishing

@RSocPublishing

2 years

Insect pain perception—a new Review in #ProcB explores pain in #insects with behavioural, molecular and anatomical neuroscience evidence #SEB2022 @matilda_gibbons @LChittka @QM_SBBS #nociception

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

6 months

Amazing behavioural flexibility here, and a healthy antidote to the notion that bees acquire their nutrition by hardwired behaviours

Alexandra-Maria Klein

@naturealexk

6 months

Great observations of honeybees stealing pollen of flower-visiting wild bee species.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

@dr_andy_wilcox @EntoProf @HarperAdamsUni I'm so sorry to hear this! If it brightens anyone's day, with Simon @EntoProf we wrote the most magnificently titled paper of my career. Such a wonderful man.

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

1 month

Happy to hold a hard copy of the latest issue of Nature with our paper on bumblebee social learning in my hands, though slightly disappointed that the bees only got a footnote on the cover. Alice Bridges' cover suggestion was so much better than some blue planet exploding😉

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Scientists discover gut bacteria that improve memory in bees via @physorg_com

Scientists discover gut bacteria that improve memory in bees

An international research team have discovered a specific type of gut bacteria in bees that can improve memory.

phys.org

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

Ball-Rolling Bumble Bees Just Wanna Have Fun via @sciam

Ball-Rolling Bumble Bees Just Wanna Have Fun

Tiny, soccer-playing bees raise questions about the inner lives of invertebrates

www.scientificamerican.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 months

🚨PhD position available in insect cognition in my lab via the CSC scheme - Chinese applicants only. Friends with Chinese contacts - please circulate - thank you! Deadline January 31

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

2 years

So flower colours had adapted to bee colour vision, not vice versa. 4/4

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

4 years

Bumblebees Solve a 17th-Century Psychological Puzzle via @sciam

Bumblebees Solve a 17th-Century Psychological Puzzle

By answering the question posed in Molyneux’s problem, the invertebrates may have demonstrated an ability to internally represent objects

www.scientificamerican.com

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

3 years

A bumblebee fails her entry exam for insect university. Happy May Day everyone :-)

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Lars Chittka

@LChittka

5 years

In 1987 (as an undergraduate student) I did the first learning experiments on honeybee drones, to test their colour vision. Since drones don't visit flowers, I had to train them to colour targets marking their hive entrance. Shown here is a drone approaching a UV filter.