Dee Lusby wrote:

>Okay Peter now plug in humans dancing and so called human language of
dancing and communicating,,, how does this relate? Are we communicating or
is it just so much nothing for us too?

I am not at all sure what the question is here, but in the interest of free
exchange of ideas I will attempt an answer. First, I do not think that bees'
communication is "so much nothing". That is Ruth's position, not mine. Not
only do I believe that von Frisch richly deserved the Nobel Prize for his
discoveries, but I think Tom Seeley has done just as much to advance our
understanding of invertebrate intelligence. His work on "Quorum Sensing" is
utterly astonishing. (A complete fantasy, according to Ruth.)

However, I will be the first to point out that honey bee intelligence and
communication has almost no relationship to human intelligence and
communication. Therefore, the use of the term "dance language" is probably
misleading. It is not obvious (perhaps impossible to know) if bees are
remotely aware of what they are doing. A bee's response to another bee's
dancing may be entirely reflexive. In other words, one bee may dance out the
location to a nectar source and another bee simply reverses the information
since it has the capacity to dance out that location itself. 

None of this belittles the amazing systems that honey bees have, however. In
fact, as we gain more understanding of the evolutionary underpinnings of our
own intelligence, we realize that much of it is also automatic and
reflexive. Our much beloved consciousness may be a functional illusion that
gives us the sense of knowing and being "in charge" when really, we know
very little about ourselves and control even less. 

Lastly, regarding people communicating, we do try!

pb

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