The Mind of a Bee: Dialogue with Lars Chitka

Lars Chittka is the author of the book The Mind of a Bee and Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary College of the University of London. He is also the founder of the Research Centre for Psychology at Queen Mary. He is known for his work on the evolution of sensory systems and cognition using insect-flower interactions as a model system. Chittka has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of animal cognition and its impact on evolutionary fitness studying bumblebees and honeybees.

I often say that human beings have lost the sense of the mindedness all around us—that we exist fully embedded in mind. In this episode we cultivate an appreciation of the remarkable mind of a bee.