Thursday, December 8, 2011

Fibonacci in nature : The bee ancestry code


Fibonacci numbers also appear in the description of the reproduction of a population of idealized honeybees, according to the following rules:

  • If an egg is laid by an unmated female, it hatches a male or drone bee.
  • If, however, an egg was fertilized by a male, it hatches a female.
Thus, a male bee will always have one parent, and a female bee will have two.

If one traces the ancestry of any male bee (1 bee), he has 1 parent (1 bee), 2 grandparents, 3 great-grandparents, 5 great-great-grandparents, and so on. This sequence of numbers of parents is the Fibonacci sequence.


Source: Wikipedia

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