Flies (100k neurons), when trapped, will fly upwards and toward the light until they die of exhaustion. Exactly like that ass that cannot decide which way to go.
Bees (500k neurons) have the self awareness to get bored. After a few minutes of flying upward and towards the light they set off in a random direction. Then they repeat the cycle until they escape.
“If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle down horizontally, with its base to the window, you will find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger, in their endeavor to discover an issue through the glass; while the flies, in less than two minutes, will all have sallied forth through the neck on the opposite side.... It is their [the bees'] love of light, it is their very intelligence, that is their undoing in this experiment. They evidently imagine that the issue from every prison must be there where the light shines clearest and they act in accordance, and persist in too logical action. To them glass is a supernatural mystery they never have met in nature; they have had no experience of this suddenly impenetrable atmosphere and, the greater their intelligence, the more inadmissible, more incomprehensible, will the strange obstacle appear. Whereas the featherbrained flies, careless of logic as of the enigma of crystal, disregarding the call of the light, flutter wildly hither and thither, and meeting here the good fortune that often waits on the simple, who find salvation there where the wiser will perish, necessarily end by discovering the friendly opening that restores their liberty to them.” — Maurice Maeterlinck
I searched for any paper detailing an experiment involving bees, flies and bottles but found none.
I've never seen bees following light like moths, but I'm not sure I've seen flies doing the same either. Wouldn't bees eventually ignore light and try to find the hive?
Successful people often attribute breakthroughs or revelations with banal origins: the archetypal shower thought, musings during a commute, taking a walk, or even taking a bath. These all represent the mind churning away in down-time; why should dreams be any different a medium?
