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The dancing bees : Karl von Frisch and the discovery of the honeybee language / Tania Munz.

Publication | Not Digitized | Library Call Number: QL31.F7 M959 2016

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    Book cover

    Overview

    Summary
    We think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their productivity. But amid their buzzing, they are also great communicators and unusual dancers. As Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) discovered during World War II, bees communicate the location of food sources to each other through complex circle and waggle dances. For centuries, beekeepers had observed these curious movements in hives, and others had speculated about the possibility of a bee language used to manage the work of the hive. But it took von Frisch to determine that the bees dances communicated precise information about the distance and direction of food sources. As Tania Munz shows in this exploration of von Frisch's life and research, this important discovery came amid the tense circumstances of the Third Reich. "The Dancing Bees" draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch's full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch's research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch s complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication. This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule. "The Dancing Bees" will be welcomed by anyone seeking to better understand not only this chapter of the history of science but also the peculiar waggles of our garden visitors.
    Variant Title
    Karl von Frisch and the discovery of the honeybee language
    Format
    Book
    Author/Creator
    Munz, Tania, 1973- author.
    Published
    Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2016
    Contents
    Sensational findings
    Bee vignette I: Victorian bees
    Coming of age in Vienna
    The bees that could
    Bee vignette II: sensing the senses
    Calm before the storm
    In the service of the Reich
    Bee vignette III: deep inside the hive
    State of grace
    Picking up the pieces in postwar Germany
    Coming to America
    Bee vignette IV: seeing bees
    Attack on the dance language.
    Notes
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-267) and index.
    Sensational findings -- Bee vignette I: Victorian bees -- Coming of age in Vienna -- The bees that could -- Bee vignette II: sensing the senses -- Calm before the storm -- In the service of the Reich -- Bee vignette III: deep inside the hive -- State of grace -- Picking up the pieces in postwar Germany -- Coming to America -- Bee vignette IV: seeing bees -- Attack on the dance language.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    ISBN
    9780226020860
    022602086X
    Physical Description
    278 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

    Keywords & Subjects

    Record last modified:
    2024-06-21 20:08:00
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/bib264404

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