Dear subscribers:

   Much light and some heat resulted from my earlier posting about "Tales
of the Hive."  Once the dust settles, I will respond to selected items in
that regard.

   In the meantime, PBS has announced a new series, "Inside the Animal
Mind," starting tonight and continuing with two other episodes in the next
couple of weeks.

   Why should beekeepers and bee researchers be concerned about flagrant
use of teleology (insisting on purpose for each behavior) and
anthropomorphism (imposing human traits on animal subjects) in animal
behavior studies?  First of all, it prevents objectivity among those who
wish to study the animal scientifically.  Consider, for example, the
following quotation taken from the "Inside the Animal Mind" series
(attributed to a British scientist, Rob Picard):

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"I'm quite sure when a honeybee is sitting on a comb at the end of the long
day, she's running through pictures in her mind of the flowers that she's
visited, of the places that she's seen and of the weather conditions she
has flown through. ...If she wasn't doing that, how would she build up this
wonderful geographic perception of her whole environment?"

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   Surely beekeepers can recognize what such an attitude might lead to.
Among other potential concerns, the possibility exists that the public
might become too emotionally involved in how beekeepers treat their
"subjects."  Already, I have read of animal right extremists who have
insisted that honey bees should not be kept in prisons (i.e., hives) and
that no one should be allowed to take their hard earned honey and wax from
them.

                                                        Adrian

Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106

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*
*     "...it is lamentable how each man draws his own different conclusions
*                from the very same fact"
*
*          Charles Darwin, in a letter to Alfred Russel Wallace on 1 May
1857
*
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