i’m gonna piss

serpentine913: Sweet’N Slow (Photographer John Manno)
8bitfuture: Sonar Vision system allows the blind to perceive shapes. An international team has developed a sonar vision system which allows congenitally blind people to perceive shapes such as faces, houses, and even words and letters. A small video camera embedded in a set of glasses is connected to a laptop or smartphone, which transforms images into stereo sounds: For instance, an oblique line is transformed into an increasingly high-pitched sound or an increasingly lower-pitched sound, researchers said.  After 70 hours of training, researchers claimed that the blind can correctly classify images into specific categories such as faces, houses. They are also able to perceive where people are located in a room or some facial expressions. They can even read words and letters. 
→ Hive minds: Honeybee intelligence creates a buzz - life - 28 November 2012 - New Scientist

wildcat2030:

I CERTAINLY wouldn’t want to meet this bunch in a dark alley. Some are sitting and glowering at me from the shadows, and others are brawling in an unruly scrum, their wings and limbs flailing against the sides of their Perspex prison. Every last one of them is armed, and I can’t help wondering if they are planning some kind of coup. Fortunately, I am assured that they can be easily placated with a quick fix of the sweet stuff. “Mostly, our bees collaborate quite happily,” says Lars Chittka, whose lab I am visiting at Queen Mary, University of London. That’s just as well, because these miniature brawlers show an extraordinary intelligence when they are given the chance to shine. Chittka and others have found that bees can count, read symbols and solve problems that would perplex some of the smartest mammals. Some have an eye for art appreciation, having been trained to pick either Monet or Picasso’s paintings from a choice of the two artists’ work. They may even have a form of self-awareness, and all of this with a brain the size of a pinhead. Studying how they are capable of such great ingenuity promises to reveal much about the evolution of intelligence. It might even provide a new perspective on the workings of our own brains. Bees have long enjoyed our admiration. Ever since the ancient Egyptians began to cultivate their taste for honey, the hive has been revered for its apparent altruism and tireless work ethic. Whether bees themselves are intelligent has been a matter of dispute, however, with many considering each individual to be relatively stupid - a mindless cog in the greater honey-making machine. As the Latin proverb had it: “una apis, nulla apis” - “one bee is no bee”. Hints of apian intellect began to emerge with the research of Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch. Working in the years around the second world war, he observed that foraging bees often perform a strange jive across the honeycomb - the famous “waggle dance”, the steps of which signal the direction and distance to nearby flowers.

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