ABSTRACT
Biologists have huge advantages over palaeolithic archaeologists when it comes to the theme of how animals learn the landscape. They can, for instance, attach transponders to such tiny creatures as honeybees and actually document the orientation flights of these animals by using harmonic radar (Capaldi et al. 2000). Honeybees are able to find their small nests from distances as great as 10 km, probably as a result of a progressive process of orientation behaviour, with bees taking multiple orientation flights before becoming foragers (bees that return to the hive with nectar or pollen) in order to visit different, and larger, portions of the landscape around the hive. And there is a striking ontogeny to these honeybee orientation flights: with increased experience, bees hold trip duration constant but fly faster, so later trips cover a larger area than earlier trips. Orientation flights provide honeybees with repeated opportunities to view the hive and landscape features from different viewpoints, suggesting that bees learn the local landscape in a progressive fashion.
