The waggle dance - the direction the bee moves in relation to the hive indicates direction; if it moves vertically the direction to the source is directly towards the Sun. The duration of the waggle part of the dance signifies the distance.
Posted on 06/11/2018 5:35:43 AM PDT by ETL
Dolphins, African gray parrots and nonhuman primates ..understand the idea of "zero," but researchers were surprised to find that honeybees also comprehend this concept, considering the insects' tiny brains, according to a statement from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Honeybees have fewer than 1 million neurons, compared with the 86 billion neurons in humans — and yet, they grasp a concept that humans, by some measures, don't start to understand before preschool, according to NPR.
The researchers set up two cards, each of which had a set of symbols on them, like triangles or circles. Then, they trained a group of the bees to fly to the card with the lower number of symbols. (The bees quickly learned what the humans wanted them to do to get their delicious, sugary rewards).
The trained bees were then shown a card that was empty versus one that had symbols on it. Without any prior training, the bees flew more often to the empty card — thereby demonstrating that they understood that "zero" was a number less than the others, according to the study, which was published Thursday ..in the journal Science.
Although they flew more often to an empty card than to one that had one symbol on it, it became easier for them to differentiate when the symbols' card increased in number. For example, they more often flew to the zero when the other card had four symbols than when it had one, according to NPR.
Perhaps these findings will shed light on the brain mechanism behind what allows us to understand the concept of "nothing," Adrian Dyer, a researcher at RMIT University and senior author of the study, said in the RMIT statement. This understanding, in turn, could help in the development of artificial intelligence that also understands this concept.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
An alternative theory would be ..........
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thanks for sharing that.
And I agree. There are a number of possible conclusions. I am not going to read the linked article, or look for the actual paper. but this is just one more instructive example of how many “scientists” claim to have PROVEN something (and/or how shoddy journalism has become) when all they have done is collect some data (and then imposed some construct/interpretation on it).
Hell, a grey rock is smarter than a liberal....
I think it was Harold Hecuba. Otherwise known as Phil Silvers.
True
That Bilko guy.
“I hate science news that has the intellectual depth of Cosmo sex surveys...”
And so many of them contain, like this one, a certain amount of anti-human bias, like the little dig on preschool humans.
The anti-human bias is of course especially prevalent in any global warming “study”.
“But this is just one more instructive example of how many “scientists” claim to have PROVEN something (and/or how shoddy journalism has become) when all they have done is collect some data (and then imposed some construct/interpretation on it).”
That’s what it looks like to me as well. The only thing they may have done is determine that bees can differentiate between two cards that look different. The conclusion that they comprehend the CONCEPT of zero is a huge stretch.
To paraphrase the Gipper,
Bees may indeed know a great deal about nothing.
Democrats, on the other hand, may or may not know nothing, but they do know so very much that isn’t so.
Chemical Communication in the Honey Bee Society
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK200983/
Honeybee Communication: A Signal for Danger
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221000240X
“Waggle dance” is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share, with other members of the colony, information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations.[1][2]
The waggle dance and the round dance are two forms of dance behaviour that are part of a continuous transition. The round dance occurs for resources that are nearby (typically less than 10–20 m from the nest for Apis mellifera ligustica).
As the distance to the resource increases, the round dance transforms into the waggle dance. However, even close to the nest, the round dance can contain elements of the waggle dance, such as a waggle portion.[3]
It has therefore been suggested that the term “waggle dance” is better for describing both the waggle dance and the round dance.[4] Austrian ethologist and Nobel laureate Karl von Frisch was one of the first who translated the meaning of the waggle dance.[5]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance
Why do honeybees dance?
The orientation of the dancing bee during the straight portion of her waggle dance indicates the location of the food source relative to the sun.
The angle that the bee adopts, relative to vertical, represents the angle to the flowers relative to the direction of the sun outside of the hive.
Feb 23, 2016
The Honey Bee Dance Language | NC State Extension Publications
https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/honey-bee-dance-language
They even understand “Relativity”!!
Bee = mc^2
It is possible, though. Only one man can do this. His name is Chuck Norris.
Re: They even understand “Relativity”!!
“The angle that the bee adopts, relative to vertical, represents the angle to the flowers relative to the direction of the sun outside of the hive.”
Buzzzzzzzzzz...
Together with the honey bee dance, honey bee pheromones represent one of the most advanced ways of communication among social insects.
Pheromones are chemical substances secreted by an animal’s exocrine glands that elicit a behavioral or physiological response by another animal of the same species. In honey bees the targets of pheromonal messages are usually members of the same colony, but there are some exceptions in which the target can be a member of another colony (Free 1987).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK200991/?report=reader
In mathematics, division by zero is division where the divisor (denominator) is zero. Such a division can be formally expressed as a/0 where a is the dividend (numerator).
In ordinary arithmetic, the expression has no meaning, as there is no number which, multiplied by 0, gives a (assuming ‘a’ is not = 0), and so division by zero is undefined. Since any number multiplied by zero is zero, the expression 0/0 is also undefined; when it is the form of a limit, it is an indeterminate form.
Historically, one of the earliest recorded references to the mathematical impossibility of assigning a value to a/0 is contained in George Berkeley’s criticism of infinitesimal calculus in 1734 in The Analyst (”ghosts of departed quantities”).[1]
There are mathematical structures in which a/0 is defined for some a such as in the Riemann sphere and the projectively extended real line; however, such structures cannot satisfy every ordinary rule of arithmetic (the field axioms).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero
We lost our bees last year. Starting over. Have a friend in the bee keeping community that lost all but (I think) 5 hives. He had 31 before the winter kicked in.
We think the odd winter and moisture are the culprits of last years die off.
This year we moved all our hives to more concealed potions and elevated them higher.
They've got their own version of Seinfeld inside those hives.
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