Natures wonders: insect migration (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, November 19, 2021, 15:53 (881 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Everything about this behavior is complex. It starts with bee foragers being able to determine the distance and compass heading relative to the food source. The bees must then translate this information into a message they convey to other bees via the dance. Other bees in the nest then must be able to interpret this information and use it to navigate to the food source. How can their tiny bee brains manage all this? Australian biologists Andrew Barron and Jenny Plath note that despite bee researchers investigating the subject at great length, “We still know very little about the neurobiological mechanisms supporting how dances are produced and interpreted.

dhw: And we still know very little about the neurobiological mechanisms supporting how our human thoughts are produced and interpreted. But we see ourselves as intelligent.

QUOTE: The behavior develops in adult honey bees who have emerged from the pupa stage and chewed through the protective cell to join the colony. Honey bees are able to interpret the dance after about one week. The development includes electrophysiological changes in brain neurons, evident when comparing mature foragers with newly emerged bees. Therefore, the behavior appears to be a combination of innate capabilities and pre-programmed learning. (DAVID’s bold)

dhw: Clearly the innate capabilities include learning a language and being able to process information, make calculations, and communicate the information to other members of the species – just like us humans. I don’t understand the expression “pre-programmed learning” unless it means that the baby honey bee learns what other honey bees have learnt before them – just as human babies do. Learning itself is a sign of intelligence.

To me pre-preprogrammed learning means their brains come with a preset program which activates over one week, in which much of what is needed for interpretation is given and some rapid learning is allowed. Much like babies preset for language learning.

QUOTE: There is a suite of individual capabilities and behaviors involved (including navigation, data processing, mathematics, and communication), requiring an engineering process as well as the development of computational algorithms, which are encoded in the brains of honey bees.

DAVID: this is implanted automaticity in tiny brains. Note my bold. It must be designed as stepwise development is impossible.

dhw: Nobody knows how any of these wonders originated. We can only speculate. Once a system is in place, the organism will use it. What we have here, it seems to me, is an exact equivalent, on a far, far smaller scale, of the way we humans behave. The child is born with an innate intelligence. It learns the language and it gets to know its environment and whatever tasks are demanded of it. Apparently it takes the bee a week to learn the language, and it spends the rest of its life navigating, data processing, calculating, communicating, just like every other insect and animal, including humans. I suggest we use our intelligence to make all the decisions involved in our vast range of behaviours, while the bee uses its intelligence to make all the decisions involved in its infinitely smaller range of behaviour.

The waggle dances are complex, give much information to be automatically interpreted, so learning in one week is automaticity of implanted 'intelligence'.