Natures wonders: insect migration (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 02, 2021, 16:06 (875 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: So you think children learning to handle language are automatons. No? Then aside from scale and time span, please explain the difference between: 1) children perceiving facts, learning the sounds that are associated with those facts, using those sounds to communicate with others, and eventually taking decisions, and 2) bees perceiving facts, learning the movements that are associated with those facts, using the movements to communicate with others and eventually taking decisions.

DAVID: Wait: how do bees know where to fly for nectar from a hive they have never left? The goal has direction and distance and when arriving there it must be recognized as the endpoint, unless direction and distance are precisely coded in advance. That is the author's point.

dhw: Why must I wait for you to respond to the point that I have raised above? Please explain the difference between the two processes of learning.
Where does the article say the new adults don’t leave the hive? It just says they learn the dance within a week. Of course the goal has direction and distance and an endpoint – that is the whole purpose of the dance! And of course the movements are precisely “coded” – all the younger bees have gone through the process of learning from the older bees which movements denote which directions and distances will lead to which endpoints! Just as we humans learn which sounds denote which objects and which actions lead to which endpoints.

DAVID: You have come up with a theory not in the article: as the larvae develop into full adults BEFORE leaving the hive, they recognize the information in the dance from an automatic algorithm which fully develops automatically in their brain. Not learned from adults in a classroom.

dhw: It is when they are adults that they learn the dance! And it takes them a week. What do you think they do during that week? Of course the dance won’t be learned from more mature adults standing in the hive pointing to a blackboard! Nor will it be learned by sitting in the hive waiting for your God’s instruction manual to print itself in their brains! They wouldn’t even know what a flower was until they’d seen it, let alone what they should do until they’d practised doing it!

The author states: "Therefore, the behavior appears to be a combination of innate capabilities and pre-programmed learning." Sure they are taught by watching the dance and have to go out from the hive and experience what they are told to look for. The innate capabilities involve having memorized what they have seen in the dance, which includes how far to fly, the direction, some concept of 'flower', and the author adds the obvious need for 'preprogrammed learning' to integrate it all in seven days. He doesn't say they fly with a co-pilot.

Ant bridge algorithm
QUOTE: "...army ants manage this coordination with no leader and with minimal cognitive resources. An individual army ant is practically blind and has a minuscule brain that couldn’t begin to fathom their elaborate collective movement.”

dhw: We’d better start with the attributes of intelligence listed by Shapiro: cognition, sentience, purposefulness with sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities. And we’d better keep in mind that NOBODY knows the source of intelligence, whether human or non-human.

We know it is a result of evolution providing consciousness wit thought in humans.

dhw: This quote sums up exactly the same pre-judgement as your own. Ants not only build bridges, they build homes of great complexity to house all the different functions of their community, they farm, they devise military strategies of defence and attack, they have a social system that functions a great deal more smoothly than our own...Which of the above attributes do you believe ants do NOT possess? Now consider the human brain. It is a mass of individual cells that form communities. An individual cell seems to me unlikely to be able to compose a symphony or design a rocket to the moon, and yet the collective communities of cells do just that. How? If you think your God created a mechanism whereby human cell communities were able to do their own designing, how can you be so sure that he did not do the same for our fellow creatures, ranging from tiny to colossal? “Large organisms chauvinism” is what Shapiro calls it. You have already dodged my question concerning how bee learning differs from human learning other than through time and scale. Please explain how ant learning, designing, communication and decision-making capabilities etc. differ from our own, other than through time and scale.

As the author suggests it results from individual ants being programmed to do the same response each time. And God could have given the ants brains the design plans

QUOTE: To see how this unfolds, take the perspective of an ant on the march. When it comes to a gap in its path, it slows down. The rest of the colony, still barreling along at 12 centimeters per second, comes trampling over its back.

dhw: My guess is that the other 149,999 ants would then fall straight into the water. I see no point in analysing the rest of this theory.

You missed the point they automatically hold on to each other when stepped upon.