Life's Less Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service, bringing you extraordinary

personal stories from around the globe.

Search for Life's Less Ordinary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is Discovery from the BBC World Service and I'm exploring two stories each week of

how insects have transformed our world.

As a rather famous comedian once said, I'm covered in bees and I am staring at thousands

of bees, so many different types of bees.

Bees are amazingly intelligent, they're famous for this innate intelligence, they're famous

for this waggle dance, this method of communication between the different workers and they're

also very famous for their ability to learn and it is studying them, understanding how they

are beginning to learn, that is offering us this extraordinary insight into animal cognition

across many different species, including our own.

Over 80% of animals described in our planet are insects and yet their appearances can

seem as alien or as strange as many a mythic beast.

But some of us who study these wondrous species, both now and in the past, have discovered

a treasure trove of remarkable insights.

I'm Eric McAllister and in this series I'm taking a peek at those entomological pioneers

and examining how their groundbreaking discoveries and experiments have led to some truly novel

developments.

With many contrasting attitudes to bees, a lot of us love these fluffy flying packages

and we understand their value as pollinators whilst others have a morbid fear of their weapons

all primed for an attack.

...