"If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle horizontally, with its base [the closed end] to the window, you will find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger, in their endeavor to discover an [opening] through the glass; while the flies, in less than two minutes, will all have sailed forth through the open neck on the opposite side...
It is [the bees] love of flight, it is their very intelligence, that is their undoing in this experiment. They evidently imagine that the issue from every prison must be where the light shines clearest; and they act in accordance, and persist in too-logical action. [To bees] glass is a supernatural mystery...and, the greater their intelligence, the more inadmissible, more incomprehensible, will the strange obstacle appear. Whereas the feather-brained flies, careless of logic...flutter wildly hither and thither, and meeting the good fortune that often waits on the simple...necessarily end up by discovering the friendly opening that restores their liberty to them"
- Gordon Siu
p.s. when I googled an image entitled "flies and bees in a jar", I got the following image:
..entertaining.
Interesting! I want to try that now ;)
ReplyDeleteAlso: HAHAHAHHAHAHAAA Wow that picture got me. I can't look at it without laughing. SO FUNNY! :)