Dave Hamilton wrote (in part):

>Quite a few experiments have tagged the attendants from the dance and
>watched them arrive at the food.  Why would this not demonstrate
>communication?

   Yes, those experiments have been done.  However, after leaving the hive,
the searching bees spend a great deal of time searching --- 30-40 times
longer than that required by foragers on their bee line.

   In one study published by Kirchner, searching bees required an average
of almost 2 hours to reach the goal.

   And, yes, we CAN call that communication --- but most likely by odor,
not tactile in the pitch black interior of the brood nest.

>What about the mechanical bee .. it was able to recruit

   I covered that topic thoroughly in my posting of January 28th.  I am
sending another copy of that communication directly to Dave.

   Again, the robot bee worked (and very poorly at that), even when they
paired the bee motion with odor.  So why not credit odor as the responsible
agent?  We in science call upon a law called "Occam's Razor" in such a
case; use the simplest explanation that can accommodate the evidence.  Odor
is by far more simple than a human-type language.

                                                        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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*
*  "When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory,
*     we must accept that fact and abandon the theory, even when
*     the theory is supported by great names and generally
*     accepted."
*
*                                       Claude Bernard --- 1865
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