If you dare.
 
Here's a good example of a well meaning newspaper reporter garbling the
question and the answer.  I'm pretty sure these are not Shipman's words...
 
>   ''The bee doesn't know what it's doing. Its behavior is programmed,
> not learned from other bees. Newly born bees do the waggling runs after
> their first flights to find nectar, before ever seeing another bee
> dance.
 
Hmmm.
 
Know?  How could you ever tell?
 
Programmed?  That implies a programmer.  Bee programmers are in very short
supply on this planet.  Last count: zero.
 
Born?  Hmmmm again.  Bees are hatched, but then they are not
bees, they are larvae.   The larvae pupate.  And then they emerge
from the pupation as bees.  Born?  I think not.  Not nearly.
 
See? What can you see in a beehive?  Not much.  It's usually very dark in
there.
 
First flights?  They are not made until the bee has considerable
experience inside the hive.  Who knows?  Maybe they do 'see' a waggle
dance before they go out.
 
But then -- to change the subject a bit -- there is that famous waggle
dance.  Adrian does not think it is what everyone else -- including Dr.
Shipman, I gather -- thinks.  What exactly Dr. Wenner thinks this
phenonemen is and signifies -- if anything -- is not at all clear.  If I
recall, the last time we got close to this one Adrian deflected us with
something about function and that we think in terms of function, but in
nature, things just are.  Period.
 
I wonder.
 
C'mon Adrian what ARE those bees doing in there?  And WHY?
 
Allen
 
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