How honeybees use motion cues to estimate range and discriminate objects

Abstract

Behavioural experiments demonstrate that flying bees estimate the distances of objects' in their visual environment in terms of the motion of the objects images on the retina. Moving bees can be trained to distinguish between objects at various distances, independent of the sizes of their retinal images. Distance discrimination appears to be mediated primarily by the green channel, and is hence colourblind. Bees are also capable of segregating textured objects from similarly-textured backgrounds solely on the basis of relative-motion cues.