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| Bees join hunt for serial killers |
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Thursday, July 31, 2008
LONDON: The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers, scientists believe.
Just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says the University of London team.
This “geographic profiling” works so well in bees, the scientists say future experiments on the animals could now be fed back to improve crime-solving.
The team’s work is reported in the Royal Society journal Interface. “We’re really hopeful that we can improve the model for criminology,” Dr Nigel Raine, from Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), told BBC News.
The scientist is working with colleagues Steve Le Comber and Kim Rossmo, a former detective in the US, to tag bees with tiny coloured numbers and follow them from their nests to flower patches.
The researchers’ analysis describes how bees create a “buffer zone” around their hive where they will not forage, to reduce the risk of predators and parasites locating the nest. It turns out that this pattern of behaviour is similar to the geographic profile of criminals stalking their victims.
“Most murders happen close to the killer’s home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal’s house, where crimes are less likely to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know,” Dr Raine explained. Understanding the geographic profiles of animals is interesting to biologists as it helps them predict the locations of important feeding grounds, and knowing these areas will inform more effective conservation measures.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
