[ExI] this might sting your interest

[Samantha Atkins]

On 10/26/2010 04:46 PM, spike wrote:
>
>
>> ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
>> Subject: [ExI] this might sting your interest
>>
>>
> <http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-complex-mathematical-problem-bees.html>
>> Bumblebees can find the solution to a complex mathematical
>> problem which keeps computers busy for days.
>>
>> Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal
>> Holloway, University of London have discovered that bees
>> learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even
>> if they discover the flowers in a different order. Bees are
>> effectively solving the 'Travelling Salesman Problem', and
>> these are the first animals found to do this...
>> relatively simple nervous systems such as those of insects
>> make this mystery more tractable."
>
> I have been pondering this in the past couple days.  I have a google alert
> on bees, so it sent me the link.  I don't know what the heck to make of it.
> Bees do some amazing things with their little bit of brain.  Apparently
> there exists some algorithm for solving the travelling saleman problem that
> we haven't discovered yet, but evolution has.  To state the absolutely
> obvious: is this wicked cool or what!
>

Perhaps I am missing something but this isn't too surprising to me.  
Brains are very very parallel. So all possible computation for some 
number of flowers (or city) orders could be computed in a fairly 
straight forward manner for N flowers where N is not too big.  Picture 
the problem as a neural net where each neuron is a flower and the weight 
between any two is proportional to the distance.  Another set has a 
inverse weighing total flight path length over an ordered association of 
the former.  Hmm.  Algorithm needs work but I think I could figure it 
out in not too much time if I had this kind of machinery to play with.  
And it is not that brains optimised to minimise energy consumption for 
maximal food nectar optimisation would hit on a workable algorithm.

- s