HOW SMART IS THE COMMON HONEY BEE COMPARED TO COMPUTERS?
According to Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, the processing power of the bee's brain—weighing 10 milligrams—is far more powerful than a computer. A conservative estimate of the bee's processing power is ten teraFLOPS (1012 FLOPS), dissipating less than ten microwatts.
According to Wikipedia, China unveiled its Tianhe-2—rated the most powerful computer in the world—with a processing capacity of 33.86 petaFLOPS (1015 FLOPS) in June 2013. It occupies 720 square meters of space and consumes 24 megawatts of power, including external cooling. The area required is enough to construct a medium size house.
The processing capacity of Tianhe-2 is equivalent to the combined size of 3,386 bees, which can fit in a small box with a power consumption of only 0.034 watts. Moreover, the bee can move about and act independently: it collects nectar and finds its way back to the hive, processes nectar to honey, "informs "its colleagues of new food sources, cleans the hive and keeps it clean, looks after the brood; the list is endless.
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