Dances of Honeybees Hi Isis It seems that we are reading some of the same books! I was lucky to see Donald Griffin a few years back at Cornell. Ironically, over the years he had been chastised for his non-mainstream views, somewhat as Dr. Wenner has been. Even though their views are at opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue. He died two years ago. From his obit: "While an undergraduate at Harvard in 1938, he and a fellow student Robert Galambos used microphones to prove that bats 'see in the dark' by emitting ultrasonic sounds and listening for the return echoes, solving the mystery of how bats navigate in the dark and catch their insect prey." Donald R. Griffin wrote in his 1976 book "The Question of Animal Awareness": The general feeling that our species is uniquely superior has suffered a series of intellectual setbacks beginning with the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions. Biological evolution is universally accepted by behavioral scientists as a historical fact. Animals are used as surrogate "models" for behavioral investigations on the implicit assumption that principles discovered this way are applicable to our own species. Yet, when questions of communication and language arise, even hard-nosed behaviorists take for granted a large element of discontinuity. To argue that language is unique to man and, therefore, no matter how complex animal communication turns out to be, it cannot be continuous with human language, is indefensibly circular. Later, in "Animal Minds" (1992: Half a century ago, when symbolic communication in animals was unknown and generally believed to be impossible, H. H. Price (1938) conceded that if animals did use symbols we would have to assume that they have minds. Symbolic communication is especially evident in the dances of honeybees. More recently, Marc Bekoff wrote in his 2004 book "Minding Animals": Darwin emphasized the importance of evolutionary mental continuity among animals and learning about the worlds of the animals themselves when he wrote about animal minds. It is narrow minded to believe that we are the only species with minds or the only species that can think, make plans, and experience pain and pleasure. Donald Griffin stressed that it is the flexibility and versatility of behavior that provide strong evidence of animal minds and consciousness. [He] suggested that consciousness evolved to allow adaptively flexible behavior. -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---