Doug Yanega made some interesting and worthwhile points in response to the
following passage in Adrian's message:
 
>>5)  The relative weight of evidence.
>>
>>   One point seems to have become lost:  The burden of proof for those who
>>wish to believe in bee "language" (a highly improbable possibility --- one
>>and only one insect species that can interpret and act on symbols?) falls
>>more heavily on proponents of that idea than on those who accept results in
>>conflict with that view (such as the 16 points in my distributed abstract).
 
Doug is right to point out that all species in the genus Apis have dances,
that there are some interesting interspecific differences among these
dances, and that related bee taxa exhibit behaviors that partially resemble
Apis dances in various ways.  I would like to attack this argument in a
different way:  even if only one species exhibited the behavior, the
taxonomic rarity of a trait provides no evidence whatsoever that it is
"improbable".  Should we be skeptical of the bipedalism, hairlessness, and
language of humans (to name just three autapomorphic human traits) simply
because one and only one primate species exhibits these traits?  Should we
be skeptical of the intercontinental migration of monarch butterflies to an
isolated set of mountaintops simply because one and only one insect species
(that we know of) exhibits this trait?
 
Fred
 
 
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Fred C. Dyer                        |    Internet:
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