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Your numbers are off, for a start. Neuron count is in the order of hundreds of thousands to millions for the more socially complex species, including the Asian

Your numbers are off, for a start. Neuron count is in the order of hundreds of thousands to millions for the more socially complex species, including the Asian giant hornet. These are known to have cognitive abilities that might surprise you, including in many species the ability to recognize familiar conspecifics by sight. And in any case, why shouldn't that size of brain be enough to sustain a personality? They aren't clones, after all, except in rare cases, and even then you have to take mutation, epigenetics, and developmental effects into account. But hey, I'm not the one implicitly advancing the claim that anything not clever enough to be human is a meat robot. You're the one doing that, and so far you've done nothing but assert it. Why don't you source it and actually defend it, instead? Until then I don't see why anyone should take it all that seriously.

genewitch 5y ago
Oh a hornet can recognize a conspecific, huh? Can you describe the house you grew up in?
- throwanem 5y ago
  Not just a conspecific, a nestmate, and to be entirely clear that's known in polistid wasps [0] but not, so far as I'm yet aware, in vespids, which are understood primarily to use scent cues instead. That said, with regard to V. mandarinia it's not easy to be familiar with current research unless you read Japanese, which I don't; probably in a decade or so there will be a great deal more in the way of English literature, given the rate at which I expect they will establish across at least the western half of the continent. Maybe a decade after that we'll have a reasonable depth of English-language papers that have to do with something other than unsuccessful extirpation strategies; I expect it depends first on how quickly they find a way across the Rockies, and second on whether anyone actually cares to fund entomology departments for something other than bee husbandry and "pest" management. In any case, if you're attempting to make an argument here, its thesis could stand considerable clarification. I'm not even sure whether you're intending to agree or not with my own argument, so would you like to elucidate a bit on what point you're trying to make and how you support it? [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11243513_Visual_signals_of_individual_identity_in_the_wasp_Polistes_fuscatus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11243513_Visual_sig...

genewitch 5y ago

Oh a hornet can recognize a conspecific, huh? Can you describe the house you grew up in?

throwanem 5y ago
Not just a conspecific, a nestmate, and to be entirely clear that's known in polistid wasps [0] but not, so far as I'm yet aware, in vespids, which are understood primarily to use scent cues instead. That said, with regard to V. mandarinia it's not easy to be familiar with current research unless you read Japanese, which I don't; probably in a decade or so there will be a great deal more in the way of English literature, given the rate at which I expect they will establish across at least the western half of the continent. Maybe a decade after that we'll have a reasonable depth of English-language papers that have to do with something other than unsuccessful extirpation strategies; I expect it depends first on how quickly they find a way across the Rockies, and second on whether anyone actually cares to fund entomology departments for something other than bee husbandry and "pest" management. In any case, if you're attempting to make an argument here, its thesis could stand considerable clarification. I'm not even sure whether you're intending to agree or not with my own argument, so would you like to elucidate a bit on what point you're trying to make and how you support it? [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11243513_Visual_signals_of_individual_identity_in_the_wasp_Polistes_fuscatus https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11243513_Visual_sig...