<i>>Contradicting prevailing scientific views, his findings demonstrated that honeybees possessed learning, memory and the ability to share information through symbolic communication, a form of abstract language. As he wrote to a confidante in 1946: “If you now think I’m crazy, you’d be wrong. But I could certainly understand it.”<p>>Frisch was right to worry. When he finally went public, many scientists dismissed his research and argued that insects with such tiny brains were incapable of complex communication. The American biologist Adrian Wenner launched a challenge to Frisch’s theory, arguing that bees locate foods solely by odors, a theory that was subsequently proved wrong, although odors are important signals for bees. Eventually, Frisch’s results were definitively and independently validated, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973.</i><p>The Nobel committee called the dismissal of Frisch’s novel ideas “shameless vanity”