Bees Help Detectives Catch Serial Killers

Hugh Pickens writes "The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers — because just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says a University of London research team. The researchers' analysis describes how bees create a 'buffer zone' around their hive where they will not forage, to reduce the risk of predators and parasites locating the nest. This behavior pattern is similar to the geographic profile of criminals stalking their victims. 'Most murders happen close to the killer's home, but not in the area directly surrounding a criminal's house, where crimes are less likely to be committed because of the fear of getting caught by someone they know,' says Dr. Nigel Raine. Criminologists will fold this insight into their models using details about crime scenes, robbery locations, abandoned cars, even dead bodies, to hone the search for a suspect."

As do Nation States

[FriendlyLurker]

doing their serial killing far away, bombing countries half the world away. While just imposing embargoes on those next door, to reduce the risk to the hive. You don't need Bee theory, forensics or the CSI team to figure out who is doing the killing though.

RFID

[niceone]

TFA mentions that they are also tracking the bees by glueing RFID tags to their backs. I wonder if any politicians reading this might start thinking of a more direct way to use this work to catch criminals...

Bees don't help detectives

[Bromskloss]

The insight that killers don't kill too close to their homes help detectives. It has nothing to do with bees, really. Bees just happen to behave in the same way.

wow, from the department of the obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

crims don't do it on their home patch... as too many people know them... I live in a dodgy estate... lots of people with heavy form here... but it's safe for me as they do all their crime where any potential witnesses aren't likely to know them. The only worries I have are from the inexperienced petty types desperate to get money for their next fix... and they'll only be able to do me the once... cos my friends will pay them a visit...

Re:As do Nation States

[Anonymous Coward]

doing their serial killing far away, bombing countries half the world away. While just imposing embargoes on those next door, to reduce the risk to the hive. You don't need Bee theory, forensics or the CSI team to figure out who is doing the killing though.

Riiight. So please explain Russia invading Georgia, China invading Tibet, Indonesia invading East Timor.

Look, if you want to pick on the USA, please go ahead. There are many good & bad things about US foreign policy. But meaningless new-age psychobabble doesn't accomplish anything except making you look like an anti-American kook.

Colony collapse

[moteyalpha]

If they discover why colony collapse happens, then they could cause colony collapse disorder among serial killers. The concept seems very old as it has been stated. These principles would apply to all situations and to consider another application, how to identify the source of lobbyists that poison information wells. It would seem that they would have to go to great lengths to conceal their -hive- and would constantly move it to obfuscate matters further. All tools can be applied to help and hinder, the root cause still remains which is the conflict itself.

Waste of public money

[Anonymous Coward]

What a great idea, spend a bunch of public money researching something that constitutes 0.000001% of all crime.

It's just like numb3rs !

Re:By the same token..

[that IT girl]

Actually, it's pretty interesting how they don't. It's like they can't help but follow it. A subconscious thing. Doesn't make logical sense to me, but their minds don't work like the rest of ours so it's hard to understand why they behave the way they do.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Two ways?

[ComputerGeek01]

I would say no. To be a serial killer it implies that you murder more then one person, generally have the same Modus Operandi and some times your victims carry similar traits or are the same in some way. I would think if you kill around your home a pattern would emerge in a very tight area and police would catch on. The only thing you would accomplish is having them profile you as someone who kills spontaneously and has little or no self control, which would be the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish.

In short it is still safer to kill away from your home, the police still would have to figure out which direction your coming from and as the article says there is a far lower chance of you being recognized. Not that I've put too much thought into this or anything :-P

Re:Two ways?

[D-Cypell]

Or political buildings

Re:By the same token..

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you know?

works GREAT so far!!!

[globaljustin]

they are using this software in Afghanistan and Iraq to figure out possible locations of bomb building and enemy safe houses.

yeah, and how's that going? I bet if we use these models we could find those WMD too!

give me a break.

I am fully in favor using all tech at our disposal to be better at law enforcement (while still respecting civil rights of course), but what scares me is the underlying theories behind how they use this data. They actually think that all human behavior is quantifiable and that if we can just get a big enough database and the right algorithm (and maybe some pre-cogs [wikipedia.org]) then we can END ALL CRIME! never...

Human behavior (including that of serial killers) has tendencies, but that's as far as we can pin it down. Deal with it.

As the first post explained, humans understand the 'don't shit where you eat' principle innately.