By Susan Milius
Randolf Menzel runs a sophisticated insect-neurobiology lab in Berlin, but he puzzled for years over how to follow a bee. “Running behind a bee doesn’t help very much,” he says. Racing along, an observer can keep a tiny spot against the sky in sight for a good distance, but sooner or later the person glances away from the bee for a second. “If you have lost it from sight, you will never find it again,” says Menzel.
One athletic student could keep up for record distances of some 50 meters, “but he was falling down a lot,” Menzel recalls. So, Menzel gave up on runners and instead maximized conditions for stationary observers to track the bee. “We had lots of students lying on the ground, following it with their fingers,” he says.