Sunday, April 15, 2007

Cell phones causing Colony Collapse Disorder?

There's an article in The Independent which suggests that cell phones may be the cause of the abrupt disappearance of honeybees.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

This makes a lot of sense to me. While cell phones have been around for quite some time now, it seems that their annoying ubiquity has reached a crescendo in the past year or two. In the stores, the restaurants, and most alarmingly the streets, everybody and their sister is yakking away on their cellphones. Cellphones also appear to have rendered the population incapable of making simple independent decisions, as evidenced by the traffic jams in the toothpaste aisle. Hey baby, should I get the peppermint tartar-control whitening toothpaste, or the spearmint whitening plaque-busting gel??? What? Huh? Let me move out of this dead zone. (Runs into my cart, remains oblivious) Can you hear me now?

On second thought, maybe it's not the radio frequency waves per se that are causing CCD. Maybe the bees are just sick of hearing all of the inane chatter, and have congregated in areas which are far away from the cacophony. In that case, I'm kinda jealous.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting...

Thanks for your post. Definitely something to think about.

It's another reason I'm glad I don't own a cell phone.