
Bees' tiny brains beat computers, study finds - shrikant
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/bees-route-finding-problems
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RiderOfGiraffes
Without reading the report they refer to, I'll declare in advance ...

What a pile of steaming doo-doo. Give the bees a hard instance of the TSP and
watch them flail. Give a computer an instance that the bees "solved" and watch
it solve it in less time than it takes a signal to travel from one neuron to
another.

Brains are amazing things, bees are amazing critters, but hard instances of
NPC problems can't be solved exactly by using these sorts of short-cuts. Soap
film gives good solutions, but not necessarily optimal. Simulated annealing
gives good solutions, but not necessarily optimal. Randomized shotgun hilll-
descending gives good solutions, but not necessarily optimal.

Neural nets, either wetware or software, give good solutions, but not
necessarily optimal.

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tgriesser
It looks like the article isn't even in circulation yet. It's listed on the
American Naturalist website as a "Forthcoming Article"

[http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/showForthcomingToc?j...](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/showForthcomingToc?journalCode=an)

As a Biology major, and having taking several classes with a nationally
recognized neuroscientist with concentration in honeybee brains, articles like
this are particularly interesting to me, and I hope to see this study when it
comes out.

It is worth noting how rarely news outlets will report correctly on the
findings of research - they jump on whatever might make headlines, sometimes
even completely contradicting the article in question.

That being said, I think it also inappropriate to say things like _What a pile
of steaming doo-doo_ about a study that you haven't read yet. While it is
human nature to be skeptical, and yes it might not meet all of the the
implications that this news brief summary of an abstract makes, it is
important to recognize that there so many things that nature does way better
than anything man even comes close to, and that studying the efficiencies of
these systems makes for better design and undestanding.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I'm sure the article will be fascinating. I'm also sure the bees don't solve
the TSP _as computer scientists and mathematicians define it_.

As I say elsewhere, hard instances of the TSP are non-trivial to find,
especially in 2D. Random instances are almost always trivial. Further, "good"
solutions are trivial to find, even when the exact problem is hard.

I'll bet the bees never solved a hard instance (in the technical, algorithmic
complexity sense of "hard"). The hype is going to be way overblown.

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srean
It all depends on the definition of "solved". I doubt whether the same
standards of "solved" were applied to computers as well as to the bees. If one
is willing to relax the standards, TSP isnt that hard to solve on computers
either. One such old solution is to simulate the dynamics of an elastic band
that is attracted to the cities.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=elastic+net+tsp>

It is not guranteed to reach the absolute minimum cost, and no point of the
band may pass through a city location right away. But more often than not the
band stabilizes at a decent solution. Would this be considered a solution of
TSP in a computer science sense ? No, it is not even an approximation
algorithm. But for practical purposes it may be good enough, and I think thats
what the bees care about.

Statistical physics has answers to such problems if the standards are weakened
to "solves it to within an _acceptable_ tolerance _most_ of the time".
However, both the weasel words, "acceptable" and "most" are necessary. These
tools may be applied to other biologically motivated solutions as well.

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darwinGod
Is this true, or an exaggerated report? Anyone read the paper yet?

No mention of comparison of number nodes TSP which took "the computer" "days"
to solve vs Number of nodes,the flowers constituted.

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shrikant
The citation is: _Lihoreau, M., L. Chittka and N. E. Raine (2010). Travel
optimization by foraging bumblebees through readjustments of traplines after
discovery of new feeding locations. American Naturalist: doi:10.1086/657042._

I've been foraging around trying to get my hands on the report, but to no
avail. Maybe someone with better Google-fu can help?

~~~
briandon
One of the authors of this paper, Raine, makes his papers available as PDFs:

[http://www.biology.qmul.ac.uk/research/staff/chittka/chittka...](http://www.biology.qmul.ac.uk/research/staff/chittka/chittkalab/Team/Nigel.html#publications)

The one that you're interested in is listed as "in press" without a PDF yet.
He'll probably link it up soon.

You could also try emailing him now at the address on that site. I've had
great success email researchers directly and asking for (p)reprints of
specific papers.

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bwooceli
These "early" studies kind of drive me insane. "Research uncovers that carbon-
based life forms more capable than computers when it comes to building
protein".

I disregard (except to post a snarky comment apparently) until the downstream
studies do something to unlock whatever potential they've uncovered.

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charlief
Solving geometric TSP with ants
<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1068009.1068051>

Maybe there will be a bee-inspired TSP algorithm in the future?

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tocomment
Could these bees be solving an NP problem in P time? Could they test that by
increasing the number of "cities" and seeing if it takes the bees
exponentially longer?

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teilo
My guess is that they are using some sort of biological algorithm of sorts
that does NOT scale, but is highly efficient for the typical bee workload.

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Tichy
As darwinGod mentions: the number of nodes would be interesting.

Still, bees are marvellous.

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tocomment
Can't we map other NP complete problems onto TSP and then have these bees
solve them for us?

