Video of cluster movements
Posted: March 26th, 2015, 9:13 am
I haven't had a TV for years, so I don't keep up on TV programming. Last night, I visited my Aunt and Uncle, who always have their TV on. There was a show on the PBS channel, Nature: The Gathering Swarms.
The show had a small segment about a swarm of honeybees finding a new home, but it was basic info that most beekeepers should already know.
What really caught my attention was the segment on penguins. They showed how the penguins cluster up to keep warm, and played back a video at high speeds to see just how the penguin cluster moved and circulated. The penguin cluster acts like a superorganism, which I thought similar to bees. The penguins on the outside would work their way into the center, and the center penguins would rotate to the perimeter. The show said that sometimes the penguins at the center of the cluster can overheat.
I found a condensed 3 minute video of the penguin cluster on the PBS website, which the show calls a huddle.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-gath ... warm/8872/
The TV show showed them breaking the cluster too. What was interesting was that when the penguin cluster broke up when the sun came out and the day warmed up, all the penguins that had been on the outside (cold penguins) formed a new, smaller cluster to warm up, and other penguins surrounded them.
I don't know how penguins compare to the movements of individual bees in a honeybee cluster, but I think it is plausible that a honeybee cluster could behave in a similar fashion. It's a superorganism in a cluster to regulate temperature in an environment where any individual would freeze to death on its own.
If you get a chance, I encourage folks to watch the PBS special, Nature: The Gathering Swarms.
I found a YouTube video of the broadcast. The penguin segment starts at the 13:00 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1a-KmteSSU
The show had a small segment about a swarm of honeybees finding a new home, but it was basic info that most beekeepers should already know.
What really caught my attention was the segment on penguins. They showed how the penguins cluster up to keep warm, and played back a video at high speeds to see just how the penguin cluster moved and circulated. The penguin cluster acts like a superorganism, which I thought similar to bees. The penguins on the outside would work their way into the center, and the center penguins would rotate to the perimeter. The show said that sometimes the penguins at the center of the cluster can overheat.
I found a condensed 3 minute video of the penguin cluster on the PBS website, which the show calls a huddle.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-gath ... warm/8872/
The TV show showed them breaking the cluster too. What was interesting was that when the penguin cluster broke up when the sun came out and the day warmed up, all the penguins that had been on the outside (cold penguins) formed a new, smaller cluster to warm up, and other penguins surrounded them.
I don't know how penguins compare to the movements of individual bees in a honeybee cluster, but I think it is plausible that a honeybee cluster could behave in a similar fashion. It's a superorganism in a cluster to regulate temperature in an environment where any individual would freeze to death on its own.
If you get a chance, I encourage folks to watch the PBS special, Nature: The Gathering Swarms.
I found a YouTube video of the broadcast. The penguin segment starts at the 13:00 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1a-KmteSSU