For those interested in the honeybee "dance language" (DL) controversy.
Please, consult my latest letter in *American Bee Journal* : Rosin, R.
(2011) *ABJ *151(6) :542-543.
For a reason I was not permitted to explain,* *I deliberately used all the
space to deal only with the mathematical ability the DL requires of both
dancers and recruits, for very many steps along the way, and contrasted it
with the fact that so far there is no shred of evidence that honeybees can
even count. (With deepest apology to Wenner, I left aside the very many
other utterly devastating arguments against the DL hypothesis.) Even so, my
original letter was far too long, and I drastically slashed it down to
comply with the editor's urging. In the process I deleted one very
important point for my criticism of the belief by Chittka and Geiger (1995)
that their results show honeybees may have at least a very primitive
counting ability (which the authors never even tested for more than 5
items). I shall explain that point here.
The authors' belief that their trained foragers were able to count up to 5
items, is actually based not only on the groundless belief that trained
foragers can use their own distance-information, but also on *circular
reasoning. *Only in the test with 5 items (equally spaced between the hive
and the feeder at the fixed distance), was it possible to include two
control-feeders, one after 3 items, (used in training), and another, after
4 items. A small majority (59%), arrived at the control-feeder after the
4th items. The authors assume (without the least evidence), that those bees
opted for a for a compromise between the feeder after 3 items (training),
and the feeder after 5 items (testing); thus landing at the control-feeder
after 4 items. However, to determine where that "compromise-feeder" was
located., the bees needed to average 5 and 3, i.e. add 5+3=8, and then
divide (8:2)=4. The authors, thus, inadvertently assumed that the bees
could count up to 8 before obtaining any evidence that they can even count
up to 5.
Also, in the reference to Khalifman add the number of pages : 415-418.
Have fun!
--
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")
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