Keith Malone said:

> ...I think bees are very intelligent...

and Dick Allen said:

> So Keith, where exactly in there do the bees do their
> reasoning? Is it done in the protocerbral lobes or the
> tritocerbral region? Perhaps the suboesophageal
> tritocerbral commisure? <g>

Don't be so quick to grin about "bees reasoning".
They appear to be MUCH smarter than one might expect,
at least as applied to figuring out how to bring
home the groceries.

No, I am >>NOT<< anthropomorphizing bees in the least!

Back in April of 2001, the journal NATURE reported on a study
that demonstrated that bees do have "higher cognitive functions".

In short, bees do well at cognitive tests one would perform
on lab primates and undergraduate student human volunteers.
(It is often hard to tell the difference between undergrads
and the other primates found in research labs, but I digress.)

Using mazes, they marked the path to a dish of "nectar" with
one color and the path to empty feeder dishes with another color.
The color at the entrance to the maze was a "sign" that told the
bees which color to follow within the maze to get the nectar.

They also used vertical versus horizontal lines in the mazes.
Bees trained to play the "color" game could win the "lines"
game without any training, and visa versa.

This is very clear proof that abstract reasoning can be done
by bees.  The concept of "same" or "different" were clearly
applied by bees in a way that would never be presented to a
bee in "normal life".

Now, this was a "Y Maze", which is not a complex maze at all.
The bees had to decide between two paths diverging from a single
point, so one could argue that the bees had a 50/50 chance from
the outset.  But they got numbers like 70% "winners", which is
both clearly statistically significant, and also proves that the
bees were not depending upon odor to find the nectar.  (If they
were using odor, nearly every bee would fly straight to the nectar.)

Other experiments indicated that bees can even APPLY what they
learned in one situation to another very different situation. Bees
trained in the concept of "same" and "different" with odors were
able to solve the visual color and pattern mazes without any training.

So, where does "reasoning" take place in the brain?
Given that bee brains are very simple, we may actually find the
exact neuro-chemical process that we call "reasoning" by looking
at the brains of bees.

But bees ARE apparently capable of what can only be called
"abstract thought and reasoning".


Abstract
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v410/n6831/abs/4
10930a0_fs.html

Full text
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v410/n6831/full/
410930a0_fs.html



        jim (From Honey Bees to elephants,
           we're all just basic elements.
           And we all turn to compost when we die.)

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