Nature

Bumblebees solve a version of the classic 'travelling salesman' problem

Given several flowers to visit in an unfamiliar patch, bumblebees don't just fly to whichever is nearest next — after a few exploratory trips, they converge on close to the shortest possible route linking every flower, a problem that stumps even powerful computers as the number of stops grows. They appear to learn the route through trial and error, not instinct.

Mathieu Lihoreau, Lars Chittka & Nigel E. Raine, Travel Optimization by Foraging Bumblebees through Readjustments of Traplines after Discovery of New Feeding Locations — The American Naturalist, 2010

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