A week ago Allen Dick (17 Jan) and Lars Hansen of Denmark (18 Jan)
requested input from me about four specific questions. Since those topics
do not overlap, I will cover them one at a time in separate postings ---
the first with Allen's request, here in part:
"... from a layman's perspective -- [do] you have any thoughts about the
causes, 'purposes', 'functions' and 'meaning' and relationships involved in
the curious bee behaviour that is described as dancing. Without getting
into the problems with using these words, I wonder if you have any musings
on what the dance is all about.
*********
Please bear with me for a while --- I am not trying to be evasive on
this issue but must provide some background. Patrick Wells and I actually
covered this topic quite thoroughly in Excursus TEL in our 1990 book.
ANATOMY OF A CONTROVERSY: THE QUESTION OF A "LANGUAGE" AMONG BEES.
Columbia University Press. (I can send a copy of this excursus, without
references, as an attachment by e-mail to anyone who requests it and who
can receive such an attachment.) I will try here to keep my comments in
layman's terms.
Unfortunately, one MUST get into the "word problem" (Allen's expression)
since that is the root of the issue at hand. In 1865 the eminent French
physiologist, Claude Bernard, recognized as much when he wrote:
"The nature of our mind leads us to seek the essense or the why of
things....experience soon teaches us that we cannot get beyond the how,
i.e., beyond the immediate cause or necessary conditions of phenomena."
That is, almost all of us in the Western world spend our lives immersed
in a Judeo-Christian tradition, which holds that God created all for a
purpose. George Kneller summed up that attitude in 1978 when he wrote:
"Teleological explanations ... are essential to biology. They imply that
the parts, processes, and behavior patterns of living things are organized
so as to attain specific goals, which contribute as a rule to the ultimate
goal of reproductive fitness."
A narrow attitude, such as Keller's, now dominates studies in behavior,
bee research, and ecology (not to mention the effusive treatment found in
nature programs and "documentaries" --- Disney-fication of science, as some
have called it).
In that ready acceptance of teleology, however, such an attitude
actually hampers scientific progress to a great extent. Why? Because one
can easily generate a "satisfying" answer to a "why" question. In 1941
John Steinbeck, one who associated often with scientists, expressed the
danger of such an attitude, as follows:
"But the greatest fallacy in, or rather the greatest objection to,
teleological thinking is in connection with the emotional content, the
belief. People get to believing and even to professing the apparent
answers thus arrived at, suffering mental constrictions by emotionally
closing their minds to any of the further and possibly opposite `answers'
which might otherwise be unearthed by honest effort"
For example, one can ask, "Why do geese fly south for the winter?" "To
keep warm" is a disarmingly satisfying answer! This explanation of
biological phenomena in terms of purposeful or goal directed behavior has
wide appeal, but it leads nowhere in scientific investigation.
We often encountered such a teleological pattern of thinking when we
offered an "odor search" answer to the question: "How do naive bees find a
food source to which they have been recruited?" Our audiences appeared to
be uncomfortable, not so much with our answer as with our question! "But
WHY then", they wanted to know, "do they dance?" Indeed, von Frisch
himself objected in 1973, as follows: "The reason why these complicated
and ingenious behavioural patterns could evolve and be a functionless
repertoire remains undiscussed [by Wenner and Wells]."
In response to that statement we offered a counter example (same year).
We described Steiner's (1952) use of methyl eugenol as an attractant for
oriental fruit flies in Hawaii, and noted:
"[Methyl eugenol] is not a component of the natural food of this fly and
probably has no nutritional value. Yet male oriental fruit flies are
irresistibly attracted to it and 'apparently cannot stop feeding when they
have free access to it, and they kill themselves with over indulgence'."
We could have added that the flash rate of fireflies (Family
Lampyridae) or the chirp rate of crickets contain ambient temperature
information; however, that fact does not lead to the conclusion that
fireflies or crickets are communicating information about temperature to
one another.
*******
Now to the question, "Why do bees dance?"
While that is a good question (but only as a starting point for
research), it can have a too disarmingly simple answer, such as: "to
describe to other bees the location of food".
Instead, early in the game (late 1940s) the scientific question should
have been changed to: "Once an attendant bee leaves a dancing bee, HOW
does the attendant bee manage to find the same source?" That (a HOW
question) is the next logical scientific step (as in Claude Bernard's
statement).
My answer to the why question: "I quite frankly don"t know WHY bees
dance! (perhaps they are only shaking odor molecules onto the antennae of
attendants)."
I have a pretty good notion now, though, about HOW recruited bees manage
to find a food source exploited by regular foragers --- they readily expoit
odors and wind patterns as they search.
WHY bees dance, a theological question, now falls outside the limits of
that which I wish to investigate. Neither, might I add, is the answer to
such a question my responsibility.
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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* "History teaches that having the whole world against you
* doesn't necessarily mean you will lose."
*
* Ashleigh Brilliant's Pot-Shot # 7521, used by permission
*
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