# The Mind of the Bee



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

_Chittka himself is “pretty convinced” that bees are sentient beings. “We’re exposing them to challenges that no bee has ever encountered in its evolutionary history. And they’re solving them.”_









‘Bees are really highly intelligent’: the insect IQ tests causing a buzz among scientists


We all know these busy insects are good for crops and biodiversity, but proof is emerging that they are also clever, sentient and unique beings




www.theguardian.com


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

And here Dr. Chittka outlines some of the approaches to his work, and how he is continually surprised at what bees are able to do:









The Mind of the Bee - Lars Chittka (023) - 2 Million Blossoms


Have you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a bee? How they perceive the world and learn to understand the landscape? On today’s episode, Kirsten talks with noted neurobiologist and bee scientist Lars Chittka from the University of London, whose new book The Mind of a Bee is a fascinating...




2millionblossoms.com


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

my view russ is that individual bees could not be sentient, but the superorganism that is the colony operates with sentient-like behavior, depending on which definition of sentient one is using.

from merriam-webster:

*Definition of sentient*

1: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions // _*sentient*_* beings*
2: AWARE
3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling

cite: Definition of SENTIENT

it wouldn't be too hard too argue any of the three definitions above when describing observations of a bee colony. numbers 2 & 3 are pretty straighforward. number 1 is doable, but then you have to define responsive, conscious, and sense impression.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Dr. Chittka's research is certainly eye-opening. The latest is that bees can develop optimistic or pessimistic outlooks depending upon their environment- he relates at the end of the talk that many of these experiments were set-up with the expectation that the bees would fail, only for them to succeed.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i understand the view that the superorganism can assume postures that some would interpret as optimistic or pessimistic, but again if chittka's definition of optimism and pessimism includes 'outlook' into the future, in my view he is really stretching it there.

i spend a lot of my time watching my hive entrances. differences in behavioral postures are pretty obvious once the beekeeper starts learning how to correlate entrance observations to colony status. learning how to 'read' these observations is valuable to understanding about bees at the colony level and allows for better management.

an easy example of this is queenlessness leading to broodlessness. by watching the behavior at the entrance one might notice what appears to be lack of purpose on behalf of the workers...

i.e. foraging for pollen pretty much stops in comparison to other cohort hives in the apiary, guarding is greatly diminished and attempting robbers don't get near as much resistance, and the bees on the outside appear to be wandering aimlessly around the landing board as if they were on strike.

one might infer by these observations that the bees are perceiving their current status as 'hopeless'.

there's quite a stark difference in the observations described above suggesting 'hopelessness' vs. a happy, healthy, queenright, age-balanced colony that is brooding on the pollen and nectar flows.

no, in my view what we observe with honey bees is proof of intelligent design in full glory. it's precisely an amazing set of genetics and epigenetics at work. it's all based on a physiological substrate, i.e. mostly hard wired with some flexibility worked in.

not that a colony can't 'learn' from experiences. like for example becoming locally adapted to seasonal changes and the flows and dearths associated with them. i see evidence for this in the modulation of brooding in advance of anticipated environmental changes such as these.

but i would proffer that even this 'learning' is part of an evolving hardware/software package and is driven by physiology vs. learning. that is, learning in the sense only we humans are given a special capacity for.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Good observations, SP.

While I am not yet convinced that bees have consciousness, I think he makes a pretty compelling argument that bees can learn.

If you have not yet watched the video that initiated this thread, it is well worth the investment, IMHO.

I should also clarify that his studies are exclusively with bumble bees, so the results might be different with honey bees or other social / semi-social bees.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

thanks russ. 

i've added watching the video to my list.

wrt bumbles, i'm with you. most of what i conceded to above has to do with the honey bee superorganism. i don't anticipate being convinced that solitary or even semi-social insects have been endowed with such capacity, above and beyond what is physiological, depending of course on how the terms are defined.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Thanks, SP. I'll be interested in your opinion after watching the video.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)




----------



## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

I have not watched the video, yet.
I'm not sure honeybees have the ability to learn, not the we do, that is. Rather they react to stimuli that has evolved into instinct.
One example of this inability to learn would be the humble robber screen. A honeybee can leave their own hive equipped with a robber screen and be defeated by an identical screen on the hive next door. Then return to their hive and successfully navigate their screen.
Also, when bees are trying to defeat a screen on a strong healthy colony they are fooled or lured by the odor coming from the hive opening at the bottom of the screen. Yet, in the absence of that odor the robbers find their way into the hive. 

Alex


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

AHudd said:


> One example of this inability to learn would be the humble robber screen. A honeybee can leave their own hive equipped with a robber screen and be defeated by an identical screen on the hive next door. Then return to their hive and successfully navigate their screen.


i have wondered about that ah. i'm not sure how i would know this was happening with my bees, since they all look pretty much the same. has anyone documented this is the case?



AHudd said:


> Also, when bees are trying to defeat a screen on a strong healthy colony they are fooled or lured by the odor coming from the hive opening at the bottom of the screen. Yet, in the absence of that odor the robbers find their way into the hive.


this would be a pretty straightforward observation to make. in addition to the odor you mention, intruding bees have a much more challenging guard bee gauntlet to run trying to access a strong colony outfitted with a robber screen.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

The video is a presentation of Dr. Chittka's research in studying the learning (and teaching!) abilities of individual bumblebees, with associated results. I encourage everyone to watch it- his experimental designs are quite robust in my view, and the observations and results are quite stunning to me.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> And listening to this talk again, Dr. Chittka references work that Dr. Page did at Arizona State concerning relative learning performance between two distinct genotypes (i.e. their high pollen and high nectar lines), suggesting that speed and scope of social learning are heritable.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Here's an article describing Dr. Chittka's most recent work that leads to the discussion about sentience in bees:









Bees may feel pain


Study suggests all insects may be sentient




www.science.org


----------



## Tumbleweed (Mar 17, 2021)

Interesting article, thanks for posting. Yesterday I doled out a mild electrical correction to a horsefly that was dead set on a blood meal, it never came back.


----------



## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

squarepeg said:


> but i would proffer that even this 'learning' is part of an evolving hardware/software package and is driven by physiology vs. learning. that is,* learning in the sense only we humans are given a special capacity for.*


A stretch IMO.
Even silly birds quickly learn how to get under the bird netting so to steal the berry.
Every year I watch exactly that from the office window.

Most any viable organism is capable of learning.
Levels of learning, indeed, are different.
But the nature of learning is still about the same everywhere from a lowly worm to hominids.
Collect information - analyze - attempt to apply your conclusions.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

psychology makes a distinction between learning and operant conditioning.

"Positive reinforcement is when a positive outcome or reward follows a behavior. This type of reinforcement is a concept in behavioral psychology that can be used to help teach and strengthen behaviors. This process can be used as part of a formal training program, but it is also something that can occur naturally in everyday situations as well."

cite: Positive Reinforcement Can Help Favorable Behaviors

human's are unique in their capacity to learn in the abstract, for example by merely having another human explain something.

i just haven't had an extra hour to watch the video russ, but from what i can gather greg, the video/article is inferring that bumbles have ability to 'teach' one another.

at this point i'm thinking that this behavior observed in bumbles is likely closer to the 'imprinting' that baby ducks demonstrate when they start waddling in line behind the mama duck. one might infer from observing that the mama duck is 'teaching' her ducklings to waddle and follow her, but it is based on physiological harware/software instead.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> i just haven't had an extra hour to watch the video russ, but from what i can gather greg, the video/article is inferring that bumbles have ability to 'teach' one another.


No worries, SP.

In my very humble opinion, Dr. Chittka makes three primary hypotheses (with many webs out from these main three):

1. Bees have the ability to learn.

2. Bees have the ability to teach.

3. Bees have some form of cognition.

The most recent research is considered landmark (as I understand it) because the bumbles have seemingly learned to be conditioned to both rewards and punishment.

So in my dumb country boy understanding, there is the thought that the bees are making conscious decisions as to whether the risk (being burned) is worth the reward (sucrose).

This is considered novel because all other published experiments with insects have focused on reward cues without risks- from Dr. Chittka's perspective suggesting that bees will try both options presented to them because there is no risk- but when confronted with the prospect of risk, the bees seemingly 'weigh' the risk/reward paradigm.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood russ, and i'll try to refrain from commenting based on assumptions until i have a chance to review the novel findings.

honey bees weigh risk/reward with respect to whether or not to sacrifice themselves by stinging should the colony be threatened by an intruder. their decision to sting or not is mediated by the level of alert phermone. so in a sense, those bees releasing alert phermone are 'teaching' the rest of the colony about the risk/reward and at the individual level behavior is modified in the process.

i trust that if 'cognition' is defined carefully enough it may be applied in some way in this context.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> ... novel findings.


If you are in to eBooks, Dr. Chittka spills a lot of ink in the companion 'Mind of Bees' book regarding associative learning.

The alarm pheromone response is discussed in this chapter as well.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood. does he consider the waggle dance along the same lines?


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> does he consider the waggle dance along the same lines?


There's a whole chapter devoted to this topic. He comes from the von Frisch - Lindauer - Menzel lineage, so this serves as the foundation for his research perspectives.


----------



## Beeves4u (Dec 4, 2021)

An article I found back in May 2022 Bees and humans have a shocking skill in common, new study reveals


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood. i made it about 18 minutes into the video and got distracted.

he addresses the definition question i had @ 60 sec with "not covered here: metacognition - "

@ 10:45 i feel he should have mentioned the bees also take visual cues from the polarization of the sun's rays, perhaps he expands on that in the book.

@ 15:15 he attributes the return to the forest's edge for nectar to long term memory, when it could have just as easily been prompted by a waggle dance.

@18:20 i'm wondering if the inexperienced bee might have figured out the string pull on its own anyway.

me thinks i'm a little bit too critical at times. learning to critique scientific presentations was part of my experience during the year i spent in graduate school conducting and defending my thesis. (not bee related, rather neurophysiology)


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> @ 10:45 i feel he should have mentioned the bees also take visual cues from the polarization of the sun's rays, perhaps he expands on that in the book.


He does in-fact discuss this in the book- describing several experiments which explore the known dimensions with which bees evaluate cues including visible and infrared light, magnetic charge, scent and tactile- even outlining how bees quickly process images in monochrome and then utilize visable/infrared vision for close inspection. 



squarepeg said:


> @ 15:15 he attributes the return to the forest's edge for nectar to long term memory, when it could have just as easily been prompted by a waggle dance.


He clarifies this in the Q+A section at the end of the video- pointing out that the bumblebee dance does not indicate direction nor distance- only that there is forage in the flight range.



squarepeg said:


> @18:20 i'm wondering if the inexperienced bee might have figured out the string pull on its own anyway.


He breaks this down in the book, clarifying that no naïve bee was able to solve the string-pulling task without initial training by the team- employing incremental learning. Once the task was learned however, bees were able to learn the task from the trainer and replicate it in various forms and pass this learning on to multiple generations.

Near the end of the book he describes the concept of social learning akin to cultures in humans whereby it is plausible that colonies and populations of bees might learn a novel skill (i.e. mite biting) and teach it to others in their cohort who in turn teach it to subsequent generations- really fascinating stuff.

The book is apparently back-ordered but the eBook and audio book are both immediately available. Well worth the investment IMHO.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Beeves4u said:


> An article I found back in May 2022


Cool article- Adrian Dyer trained under Dr. Chittka and the two first published research a decade ago that suggested hymenopterans can identify human faces:



http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/2012/ChittkaDyer2012Nature.pdf


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Here are four good articles by Pete Borst which examine this question of bee intelligence. The last two in particular summarize many of the same themes and questions which are provoked by Dr. Chittka's work.

What is so interesting and fascinating to me is the seemingly unknowable nature of cognition. As Dr. Chittka observes at the beginning of Chapter 11 of his recent tome (speaking about the color of a poppy flower), _... we can experimentally ascertain that bees see this UV reflectance and we _[humans]_ do not, but how bees actually perceive it, how it looks to a bee subjectively is fundamentally unknowable. And so it is with all subjective experiences.

We therefore have to content ourselves with common-sense and probabilities._

I am struck that many (and possibly most) who accept the fundamental premises of Darwin's theories of evolution inevitably come face-to-face with the question of what is knowable. Indeed- what is even real?

If there is no intelligent source, by what objective can one know what is intelligent?


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/29/bee-cognition-insect-intelligence-research/


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Litsinger said:


> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/29/bee-cognition-insect-intelligence-research/


from this article: 

"The observation that bees are most likely sentient beings has important ethical implications. It’s well known that many species of bees are threatened by pesticides and wide-scale habitat loss, and that this spells trouble because we need these insects to pollinate our crops. But is the utility of bees the only reason they should be protected? I don’t think so. The insight that bees have a rich inner world and unique perception, and, like humans, are able to think, enjoy and suffer, commands respect for the diversity of minds in nature. With this respect comes an obligation to protect the environments that shaped these minds."

My take is: stretch, agenda driven, spin.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> My take is: stretch, agenda driven, spin.


Maybe so- but he comes from a long line of researchers who have been exploring this question of bee intelligence- FWIW.

For my part I have been trying hard to separate the political from the emperical.


----------



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

All this stuff about bees inteligence learning ability and such good eyesight makes me wonder when I watched bees grooming themselves and this little blind mite could just move himself away from the grooming bee. What wonderful eyesight when the grooming bee could not even see the mite on the bee being groomed. Makes me think not to worry about the bees mind, worry about the mites mind, This little sucker is blind and has managed to bamboozle the minds of humans and bees and I wonder how few brain cells were used to do this.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

johno said:


> All this stuff about bees inteligence learning ability and such good eyesight makes me wonder...


Thanks for the feedback, @johno.

If we think about it from another perspective, what if some resistance mechanisms are learned?

While conceding that feral bees might be swarmy, ill-tempered and unsuitable to commercial use, what if part of their ability to survive is based on learned behaviors?

Thus while genetics plays a crucial part, I wonder if it's possible that we won't be able to graft our way out of the varroa problem- needing the behavioral and epigenetic factors to ultimately make appreciable and sustainable progress...


----------



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Litsinger if bees are relying on learning ability to sort out their problems it would appear to me that they are pretty slow learners about mite behaviors, so are we come to think of it. Just think if I had a possum running around on me and the groomer combing my hair cannot see it and is then going to have to learn how to take care of it, pretty soon I am going to be covered in possums.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Litsinger said:


> he comes from a long line of researchers who have been exploring this question of bee intelligence...


that's kind of my point russ. these findings and interpretations would not be considered 'research' in the departments i was blessed to belong to during my learning experiences.

for research along these lines to be taken seriously by serious researchers papers would more likely have to appear in strictly peer reviewed journals like _*science*_, *nature*, and other specialty journals focused on insect biology.

this may be presumptuous on my part, and i'm not willing to invest the time to verify it, but my take is that chittka is most likely doing his work at a liberal leaning institution, securing that position along with any grant awards because he is stoking a narrative that is in line with said agenda.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

johno said:


> ... if bees are relying on learning ability to sort out their problems it would appear to me that they are pretty slow learners about mite behaviors...


@johno:

While I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the answers, I pose a thought experiment. 

In a recent post I understood you to say that you would prefer a proven overwintered swarm to a similarly provisioned nuc.

By all objective measures they are the same, but we have all experienced that an overwintered colony will tend to outperform a founder colony, even when similarly supported.

Is it possible that the genetic relatedness, colony learning and epigenetic adaptation inherent in the overwintered colony is the kernel that supports increased performance?

Similarly with resistance breeding- we tend to intensely focus our breeding efforts on the offspring of well-performing colonies via the grafting needle, with maybe not as much appreciation for the fact that resistance is a colony-level trait, supported by many different genetic and behavioral factors that are not so easily boiled-down.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> for research along these lines to be taken seriously by serious researchers papers would more likely have to appear in strictly peer reviewed journals like _*science*_, *nature*, and other specialty journals focused on insect biology.











Lars Chittka


Queen Mary, University of London - Cited by 28,940 - sensory systems - animal cognition - pollination biology - signal-receiver systems




scholar.google.com







http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/wordDoc/chittka%20CV.pdf


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

yes. look down the list of titles and where they are published on the google scholar list. that's 'research'. again, and jmho, but i think chittka crosses a line with his work we are considering here in your thread. it' just my point of view, and like other points of view, we all have our own based on life's experiences and other things.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> but i think chittka crosses a line with his work we are considering here in your thread.


Thanks, Squarepeg. I certainly appreciate your perspective. I do not think it is fair however to suggest that he has not been published extensively in peer-reviewed scholarly research journals. He has over 380 published research papers and his work has been cited in other research literature over 28,000 times.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i appreciate you too russ. and i don't think i suggest that in toto about chittka's body of work. we'll see if the work we are discussing here in your thread makes it into one of those peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and it very well may because in general even the peers reviewing are becoming more liberal leaning themselves. the article you shared last was published in the washington post, and that automatically pings my radar.


----------



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Litsinger a swarm is the product of a reproductive instinct and because of this is geared to succeed. A nuc put together with an untried queen is a cast of the dice, The bees in that nuc are totally confused as to where they are and what to do and it takes a while for the colony to come together and move forward. An overwintered queen placed into a nuc with frames of her own brood is in a far better situation than the first nuc but nowhere near that of the swarm as the makeup of the swarms population is planned by the reproductive urge. Meanwhile the other nucs have a glut of nurse bees that have still try to become foragers.


----------



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I agree Square, too much touchy feely and not enough nitty gritty.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> we'll see if the work we are discussing here in your thread makes it into one of those peer-reviewed scholarly journals


I think that most of the recent scholarship included in his '_Mind of Bees_' tome is the work he has supervised by Clint J. Perry:



https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Clint-J-Perry-2000685178


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

johno said:


> Litsinger a swarm is the product of a reproductive instinct and because of this is geared to succeed.


No disagreement- so we concur that a reproductive swarm is preferable to a similarly equipped nuc- thus there is something there besides simply a laying queen and sufficient worker mass that makes the swarm better.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Litsinger said:


> I think that most of the recent scholarship of his '_Mind of Bees_' tome is the work he has supervised by Clint J. Perry.


yes. the selling of original research proposals as well as competing for grants is not an easy task. sometimes departments and their professors have to 'scramble' a bit to come up with something 'saleable'.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> yes. the selling of original research proposals as well as competing for grants is not an easy task. sometimes departments and their professors have to 'scramble' a bit to come up with something 'saleable'.


Thanks, SP. While I think I appreciate where you are coming from, I think we are missing out on the opportunity to judge the research itself on its merits. Based on the research that Dr. Chittka's team has conducted over the last three decades, do you have any fundamental objections to the general thrust of the experimental designs or the attendant results and conclusions?


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Litsinger said:


> do you have any fundamental objections to the general thrust of the experimental designs or the attendant results and conclusions?


no sir, but to be fair i've not taken the time to review those and don't intend to. the topic of this thread is 'the mind of the bee'. i have a fundamental problem with the line of thought that leads chittka to make the statement i quoted from his washington post article in my post #30. it lines up with some of the other quotes you have provided attributed to chittka. perhaps i'll modify my position should i have the opportuntity to review the experimental design, attendent results, and conclusions that lead him to make such statements, and perhaps my position will remain the same.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> no sir, but to be fair i've not taken the time to review those and don't intend to.


Understood, SP. While I imagine there is little politically that Dr. Chittka and I would agree on, his research appears to be scientifically rigorous and as such I think it deserves a fair hearing. The work on optimism / pessimism and judgment bias in bees in particular is fascinating as it employs the same experimental method as used with vertebrate animals, with similar results. 

Should you have the opportunity in the future to review his bee cognition work more fully, I will look forward to discussing it.

Russ


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)




----------



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Litsinger, Dick Cryberg sums it up quite well in his post in Bee-L, there are things that you can think, but there are things that you cannot know. So keep your eyes on the doughnut and not the hole.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

johno said:


> ... there are things that you can think, but there are things that you cannot know.


I don't disagree with this sentiment, @johno.

To be fair, Dick's comment was in response to the Chittka quote above where he articulates that what one perceives (human or bee) is possibly unknowable.

He summarizes,_ 'The obvious conclusion is if you can not put a number on it and measure it objectively with some sort of measuring device we have exactly zero idea what the next person perceives. But, we all accept that all humans are conscious and can think. So, just because a honey bee or my dog does not process information exactly as I do why would I imply they are somehow deficient and can not reason, or feel emotions or feel pain? That strikes me as simply arrogant ignorance.'_

On the other hand, learning and epigenetic effects can be analyzed empirically in bees- so this I think this is an interesting and worthwhile pursuit.

Nice phrasing, BTW- you've got a good way with words.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Write-up of research from Dr. Adrian Dyer's lab in the latest Bee Culture- a Chittka protégé.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Cool write-up about Charles Henry Turner- an early 20th Century researcher that laid a lot of the groundwork for future evaluations of insect cognition:









Charles Henry Turner: The little-known Black high school science teacher who revolutionized the study of insect behavior in the early 20th century


The son of a formerly enslaved mother, Charles Henry Turner was the first to discover that bees and other insects have the ability to modify their behavior based on experience.




theconversation.com


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i may have to break down and see how this line of science views "ability to modify behavior based on experience" falls within the defintion of 'cognition'.

there are man complex behaviors exhibited by species that evidence abilities to modify behavior based on experience.

science is doing good job revealing the physiological mechanisms that drive these behavior modifications in species.

again the role for cognition is going to depend how cognition is defined and how much of the behavior modifications can be shown to be attributed to that cognition vs. part of the physiological design.


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i just finished ms. daley's expose' on dr. turner's work with honey bees you were kind enough to share with us russ.

she posits: "This simple but elegantly devised experiment led Turner to conclude that bees can perceive time and will rapidly develop new feeding habits in response to changing conditions. These results were among the first in a cascade of groundbreaking discoveries that Turner made about insect behavior."

this appears to be her view of what dr. turner concluded about his observations. perhaps it was, the article doesn't reveal one way or the other, and i didn't take the time to follow her link to turner's work.

my view is that there is another conclusion that might be reached based on turner's observations. i doubt that he was the first human observing honey bees over the millenia to notice that their foraging patterns vary with the time of day.

i'm sure that we all have noticed the gathering of pollen and nectar varies at different times of day. general wisdom is that this is because various floral sources 'give up' their pollen and nectar at various times of day depending on floral source, temperature, ect.

the behavior turner is credited here with observing could just as easily been driven by the waggle dancing back at the hive, and doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that the bees can perceive time.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> this appears to be her view of what dr. turner concluded about his observations. perhaps it was, the article doesn't reveal one way or the other, and i didn't take the time to follow her link to turner's work.


Thanks for the feedback, @squarepeg. I think the article was meant more as a biographical sketch and thus does not dwell on his scientific work other than to try to paint the picture that he accomplished much despite the obvious obstacles. I added it to this thread due to the fact that while largely overlooked in his life, his work is now considered foundational to the work that Chittka and others are doing on this question of insect cognition.

A more complete treatise of his work is attached- a few highlights:

_'One of the greatest names in the study of insect behavior is Charles Henry Turner. Turner does not easily fit into any one discipline; he has been called a zoologist, entomologist, and comparative psychologist. His contributions are many and varied. During his career, Turner published at least 71 papers. These papers include observational studies; anatomical studies; investigations into the learning ability of ****roaches, ants, and honey bees; development of apparatus; classical conditioning of moths; and even civil rights.'

'A volume on Turner’s publications, bibliography, and biography is available (Abramson et al. 2003, Abramson 2006), as is an analysis of his entomological work (Abramson 2009). Turner was a major figure in the literature on insect learning and contributed to the growing body of early experimental work demonstrating that insects were not “reflexive machines,” but had memory and problem-solving ability and perhaps emotion.'

'Of all of the insect learning experiments conducted by Turner, the one I believe is most often overlooked is his study of moths (Turner 1914). In one study, the polyphemus moth, Telea (Antheraea) polyphemus, was confined to a dish. A whistle was presented that elicited no visible reaction and was soon followed by “rough handling.” The rough handling elicited wing movement. After a number of pairings of the whistle and rough handling, the moth began to move its wings in response to the whistle. This study may be the first demonstration of classical or Pavlovian conditioning in an insect. In discussing the experiments, Turner stated, “There is much evidence that the responses of moths to stimuli are expressions of emotion. The fact that an insect does not respond to a sound is no sign that it does not hear it. The response depends upon whether or not the sound has a life significance.”'_


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

"_A volume on Turner’s publications, bibliography, and biography is available (Abramson et al. 2003, Abramson 2006), as is an analysis of his entomological work (Abramson 2009). Turner was a major figure in the literature on insect learning and contributed to the growing body of early experimental work demonstrating that insects were not “reflexive machines,” but had memory and problem-solving ability and perhaps emotion."_

i guess it goes without saying cause you know by now my view on statements like this, upon which chittka's view is purportly premised. i haven't polled them, nor do i intend to, but i could wager and likely prevail that most of the scientists i have been involved with over the years would have views not aligning with such statements.

for me to get on board with views like the ones you have shared with us here would require me to adopt new definitions of cognition and science. my apologies for repeating, and i appreciate you appreciating my feedback.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> ... i appreciate you appreciating my feedback.


@squarepeg:

I certainly appreciate your feedback- and accept your position as valid. For my part, I find the question of insect cognition fascinating but would stop well short of saying that I am convinced at this juncture- but will suggest that Chittka puts forth several compelling arguments in my very humble view.

The other fascinating aspect of this whole line of questioning to me is the intellectual thread that is woven through this story as each succeeding generation builds upon the discoveries of the previous generation, even as it might result in discoveries in other arenas and/or divergent opinions as to what the discoveries mean.

As Pete Borst observes in the June 2021 ABJ article entitled 'The Mind of the Honey Bee' referenced above: 

_'[Dr. Randolf] Menzel _[Chittka's mentor] _studied at the University at Frankfurt, and under the influence of Martin Lindauer, came to the conclusion that he wanted to concentrate on honey bee perception of colors, on which he completed his doctoral thesis (Menzel 1967). Lindauer had a profound effect on Menzel: He infected him with his enthusiasm and his insistence that bees are not merely reflexive machines but process and retain information in their nervous systems. While he did not focus on neurophysiological studies himself, many of Lindauer’s students went on to become neuroscientists or spent at least part of their careers working in neurophysiology. Menzel and von Frisch met briefly in 1967, when the latter was in his 80s. Menzel recalled that von Frisch was enthusiastic in his discussions about honey bee perception but a skeptic in regard to the next level, which he rightly regarded as speculative. This prompted Menzel to pursue the experiments needed to determine the extent of honey bees’ mental life.'_


----------



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

consider this:

"Bee brains are less than two cubic millimetres in volume, which is only about 0.0002 per cent of the human brain."

cite: Bee brains as you have never seen them before | Imperial News | Imperial College London

that's not a lot of neurons, and there is a practical limit on how much processing can occur with such limited hardware.

there are other features beyond raw size of the human brain that distinguish what we are endowed with as compared to lower life forms. understanding the anatomy, physiology, pyschology, and pharmacology of both animal but primarily human neural systems was my emphasis in both my undergraduate and graduate studies.

do you recall the movie "one flew over the cuckoo's nest"? if so, recall the behavioral change in jack nicholson's character after the doctors 'fixed' him. frontal lobotomies were employed at a dark time in correction facility history as a measure to rehabilitate unruly inmates. the practice was abandoned thank goodness.

for nicholson's character, the result of the procedure left him totally without 'affect'. affect is a descriptor of human behavior of the highest order:

"the conscious emotion that occurs in reaction to a thought or experience"

cite: Definition of AFFECT

more about the frontal lobe if you are still interested:









Frontal Lobe Function, Location in Brain, Damage, More


The frontal lobes in your brain are vital for many important functions. This include voluntary movement, speech, attention, reasoning, problem solving, and impulse control. Damage is most often caused by an injury, stroke, infection, or neurodegenerative disease.




www.healthline.com





great apes are the close to humans with regard to percentage of frontal lobe to total brain volume, (hardware), but even so the apes demonstrate significantly reduced performance of higher cognitive function, (software), as compared to us. language for example.

it is truly miraculous at how much bees can accomplish with their extremely limited hardware/software endowment, no question. i can't get on board however with even the suggestion that bees have the neural infrastructure to support emotion and other higher order cognitive functions, as least as conventional science defines those.

arguments don't have to be factual to be compelling.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

squarepeg said:


> ... but even so the apes demonstrate significantly reduced performance of higher cognitive function, (software), as compared to us. language for example.


Good feedback, @squarepeg. Dr. Chittka addresses the question of neural capacity in bees in many of his presentations. While I am outside my depth on this area, here is his conclusion from a paper entitled, 'Bee cognition'. It is fairly long, but I wanted to post it in it's entirety for context:

_'A good Skinnerian might come up with ever-more elaborate ‘simple associative’ explanations for the cognitive phenomena we have described above. The attractiveness of such explanations in small-brained animals is unsurprising, given that powerful schools of thought once advocated to explain even all human learning in associative terms. But it turns out that we might have to revise our views on more advanced cognition even in small nervous systems. A possible alternative explanation of, for example, bees flexibly copying aspects of the ‘tool use’ behaviour they had seen in experienced conspecifics is that they have a basic understanding of the outcome of their own actions, and those of other bees: that is, consciousness-like phenomena or intentionality. But surely, you might say, consciousness requires a really large brain, a neocortex…? Wrong. First, one can never deduce the existence of any cognitive capacity from gross neuroanatomy: chimpanzees have Broca’s and Wernicke’s area, brain regions that support language in humans but clearly not in chimps, so the presence (or indeed the absence) of a certain area tells us nothing about the existence of a cognitive capacity. Wholly different circuits can support similar behavioural abilities in different animals. Basic consciousness-like phenomena can be implemented with just a few thousand neurons — not a prohibitively large number for an insect brain. The study of bees has taught us that many forms of cognition might be computationally easy, whereas associative learning is not as easy as was once thought. Brains do not just support reflex loops, or else you could get by with much smaller brains in many animals. Instead, brains, even very small ones, are wired for cognition, for extracting rules from the environment, for predicting the future and for efficient information storage and retrieval.

We also have to revise the perceived contrast between innate behavioural traits (often regarded as ‘primitive’ even in the case of highly complex behaviours such as home construction in social insects or the agriculture practised in leafcutter ants) and cognition (viewed as more ‘advanced’). If you can evolve ability X in a small-brained species, there is no reason to assume that you cannot also ‘invent’ (learn to perform) X in the small brain of an individual, and indeed the neural adjustments might in part take place in the same circuits. The absence of a particular behavioral capacity in wild animals is not evidence that the ability is ‘hard to evolve’, or for the lack of adequate levels of intelligence, but might in many cases simply reflect the absence of relevant natural challenges. For example, the reason that social bees do not recognise each other individually is not that it is not technically feasible with a small brain, rather their individuals are too similar and too numerous for face recognition to be useful. Conversely, some open nesting wasps with small colonies have an innate ability for individual face recognition — and honeybees can be trained to recognise images of human faces. It is likely that in both cases the same circuits for visual pattern recognition are employed, and adjusted either over evolutionary time (wasps) or on an individual’s lifetime (bees). A latent preparedness for complex problem solving might exist in many species whose lifestyles require advanced learning abilities, and might relatively easily be refined over evolutionary time, should the relevant selection pressures arise.'_


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Free presentation by Dr. Chittka next month:









Mind of a Bee with Professor Lars Chittka


Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities.




www.eventbrite.com


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

_From the presentation today, Dr. Chittka unpacked the question surrounding, 'What is a mind in an animal?'_


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

__





Loading…






www.sciencedirect.com





In this study, we systematically described a behavioural phenomenon in bumble bees resembling object play. Bees rolled inedible coloured balls repeatedly. This activity did not result in an apparent immediate function, such as gaining food; however, bees' repeated interactions with balls suggest that the behaviour was rewarding. This rewarding aspect of ball rolling was further supported by bees' ability to form a positive association between a neutral-coloured stimulus and ball rolling. The amount of ball-rolling activity varied within and between individuals, showing that the behaviour was not stereotyped over repetitions. Similar to vertebrate play, age and sex differences were found where younger workers and male bees rolled balls more often and for longer, respectively. We suggest that the behaviour observed here has actual hedonic value for bumble bees, which adds to the growing body of evidence of a form of sentience in these insects (Bateson, 2014; Birch, 2020; Held & Špinka, 2011; Solvi et al., 2016). Further work should explore the possible ultimate advantages of such behaviour, and the ways in which play behaviour might benefit early brain development.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

One of the more accessible interviews with Dr. Chittka touching on the progressive discovery of bee intelligence:









‎2 Million Blossoms - The Podcast: The Mind of the Bee - Lars Chittka on Apple Podcasts


‎Show 2 Million Blossoms - The Podcast, Ep The Mind of the Bee - Lars Chittka - Jun 29, 2022



podcasts.apple.com


----------



## Snarge (May 4, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Not sure the most appropriate place to hang this one, but a very interesting presentation by Dr. Lars Chittka regarding as they describe, _'... the richness of bees’ instincts.'_
> 
> Through a number of experiments with bumblebees they have assessed the prospect of bee learning along with the prospect of passing along learning to their cohorts- very fascinating stuff:
> 
> ...


Russ,

Fascinating presentation! Jane Goodall’s words gave me goose pimples.

Plus, I have a new song to add to my playlist 😳
The most conflicted phrase being…

“Tell my sons that I hate…that I love what I do”

Also, I didn’t know that non-honey bees do not perform the waggle dance for their nest-mates.


----------



## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Snarge said:


> Fascinating presentation!


It is indeed interesting stuff- I'm glad you enjoyed.

The thing I find most telling about all this research is that Dr. Chittka frequently muses that they set these experiments up expecting the bees to fail- only to be proven wrong.


----------



## Snarge (May 4, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> It is indeed interesting stuff- I'm glad you enjoyed.
> 
> The thing I find most telling about all this research is that Dr. Chittka frequently muses that they set these experiments up expecting the bees to fail- only to be proven wrong.


Yes, indeed. Quite the opposite of an expectation bias.


----------

