How could bees come up with anything as complex as a dance language? (1997)

http://discovermagazine.com/1997/nov/quantumhoneybees1263?resubmit=hn

by Tomte • 11 years ago

26 7 11 years ago

It would be cool to at least check the claimed flag manifold relationship.

The quark thing seems on the giggle side of unlikely though. I could see a route to electromagnetic quantum biology, since there is some evidence for that in other contexts, but quark interactions seem fairly remote from any known biological mechanisms.

Also should the flag manifold connection be correct, sensitivity to quark interactions is not required for bee neurons to construct a flag manifold, any more than it is for humans. Bees would have presumably just hit on this maths during evolution of their neural structures, rather than during time spent staring at a chalkboard.

jameshart2• 11 years ago

Dogs can catch balls that fly along parabolic paths. I wouldn't go looking for conical structures in the dog's brain to explain how come they have such astonishing mastery of conic section geometry.

tzs• 11 years ago

Another good one with dogs is that if you are on the shore and throw a ball into the water at an angle for the dog to fetch, so that it is not straight out from where you and the dog are, the dog figures out how far to run down the shore before entering the water to get to the ball fastest.

Going straight for the ball is not optimum because the dog runs faster on land than it swims in water, so if the ball is far enough to the side the greater speed along the shore more than makes up for not directly approaching the all.

Going to the point along the shore closest to the ball is not optimum because as the dog gets near that point, it is traveling almost perpendicular to the line to the ball and so isn't going to get enough closer to justify the extra time to run there.

The best point is somewhere in between, and the dog finds that.

tvawnz• 11 years ago

http://pasteboard.co/2bBK3iI3.png

NoWhiteHorse• 11 years ago

... and the image is not even a honey bee.

tempodox• 11 years ago

Championing an unproved or unpopular idea is a good way to put your academic career on permanent hold.

Which would be a shame, actually. If everyone were to play it safe that way, we would make no progress at all. I didn't know science is a popularity contest.

How could bees come up with anything as complex as a dance language? (1997)

Related Stories