From the brains behind brains on, this is the moment of um.

Answering those questions that make you go, um, um, um, moment of um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna Goldfield.

Let's say that you have two tables right in the middle of your living room. One is bright red,

and one is bright green. On the red table, you have one single object, a green apple,

and on the green table, you have one single red apple. What you're looking at here is called

contrast. Things that have contrast really stand out to our eyes. Now, if you have a very dark

color like black, next to a light color, like yellow,

that's called high contrast. And what's famous for being black and yellow? Bees! There's got to be a

reason for that, right? My name is Gabe from Brighton, Michigan. My question is, why are bees, black, and yellow?

There's a fancy term for that. It's called aposomatic coloration. And what that does is it tells

predators not to eat it. My name is Dan Caravow. In Minnesota, I'm an assistant professor of

entomology. Entomology, by the way, is the study of insects.

And I look at native bees. So when we think of bees, we can think of things like a honeybee.

But in reality, there's 20,000 or more species of bees on Earth. And so we kind of study those other bees.

If you think about it, the black and the yellow, they're very high contrast in color.

So you have this very dark black and then a very bright yellow.

And what that does is it makes it very easy to see as opposed to something that might be green and drab, right?

And so it's very easy.

And what that does is it helps tell predators that, in fact, this is something you don't want to eat.

It's something you don't want to touch, that really bright coloration.

There's a number of other animals that do this, so things like coral snakes or poison arrow frogs.

There are butterflies that are poisonous that all look alike.

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