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Collective thinking is honey

With the right organization, a group can overcome the cognitive limitations of its members and achieve a high collective IQ.

To understand how to endow groups with collective intelligence, it is useful to examine natural systems that have evolved this ability. An excellent example is a swarm of honey bees solving the life-or-death problem of choosing a new home.

Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University. His research focuses on collective intelligence in animal groups, especially honey bee colonies.

In his lecturer. Collective intelligence in honey bees: how a swarm chooses its home” he highlights:

“A colony of honeybees is far more than an aggregation of individuals, it is a composite being that functions as an integrated whole. Indeed, one can accurately think of a honeybee colony as a single living entity, weighing as much as 5 kilograms (10 pounds) and performing all of the basic physiological processes that support life: ingesting and digesting food, maintaining nutritional balance, circulating resources, exchanging respiratory gases, regulating water content, controlling body temperature, sensing the environment, deciding how to behave, and achieving locomotion.”

The lecture is free of charge and open to the public. Download it here: “Collective intelligence in honey bees: how a swarm chooses its home.”

 


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