Aim, please

It was in Singapore a few months ago that I saw a poor bee stuck on the urinal of an upscale mall. Of course the next thing to do was to aim at the poor bee, but what else is one supposed to do? Then I got a little perplexed, the bee was not falling off. I looked closer; it seemed stuck on the porcelain wall. I looked across to the next urinal; the pot had a bee as well. Finally it dawned on me that it was painted on and meant for a purpose.

Curiously, after I got back, I found a chain mail in the inbox with the same storyline. And I discovered that it was an age old practice, lasting until the 19th century, after which it was discontinued. Some others who had done years of study on this opined with great wisdom that the early inventor found a bee stuck in his creation and put a bit of extra glaze on it. The mayor’s handbook at Wigan UK confirms the point - The Town Hall building also boasts an intriguing facility of another kind, two Edwardian gents’ urinals. These have a small picture of a bee etched into their glaze at a point which indicates where men were supposed to aim in order to avoid splashing their spats. The idea became popular and continued as a standard for a while till I guess some men started getting alarmed that the bee may fly out & sting!

Probably, men decided at that period that their aim was better or that urinals were better designed and all that and did away with the bee, but their aim started to get wild since then, splatter guards and cleaning expenses increased, the urinal cleaners union protested and so on…and the bee started reappearing in public urinals like at Schiphol, JFK and even in dorms such as at Duke. Many public schools have also been implementating the idea since then.

Goodmagazine states - Do they work? Since the bugs were etched into the airport urinals, spillage has decreased by 80 percent. Straightdope adds - When given a target, it seems, men instinctively aim at it. Side effect: Folks who've seen these urinals never again utter the cliché, "I wish I were a fly on the wall."

But I found out that the concept was even older in origins - When the Romans invented the first public urinal, they put a little target on it, so that the obvious temptation was to aim for the centre (or was it the martial mind working overtime?). And but surely, in the centre they put a little picture of a bumble bee. The Latin for bee is ‘apis’, hence the phrase that continues to date 'I'm going for apis'. Pis or Piss (now pee) is slang for urination.

So why a bee? Probably it also symbolized the message ‘as straight as a bee’s flight’ or ‘make a bee-line’…He made a beeline for the girl, bar, buffet, food etc – are usages derived from the straight lines that bees fly to reach an intended food destination. "There is no disagreement among scientists that returning foragers dance in the hive. Everyone also agrees that once a forager locates a good food source, she will be able to fly directly to and from that flower patch. That is, she flies a straight line (a bee-line) to the food patch from the hive using local landmarks and the sun for orientation." So the idea of showing the bee would have been to shoot straight like a bee’s flight (See my previous article on waggle dance, bees and Zigbee).

One manufacturer I believe added this text under the fly

We aim to please. Will you aim too, please?

Duke bee pic – Flickr , other pic from the web - google images