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We are learning so many wonderful things about Bees! They can count https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222227
by sitkack 11mo ago
We are learning so many wonderful things about Bees!
They can count https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222227
Bees play https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33369572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33369572 https://www.science.org/content/article/are-these-bumble-bees-playing-toys https://www.science.org/content/article/are-these-bumble-bee...
All of this reinforces my belief that nearly everything is conscious and aware, we differ in a capabilities and resolution but we are all more similar than we are different.
Spider Cognition: How Tiny Brains Do Mighty Things https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003146
- an0malous 11mo agoWhat is your definition of “conscious” here? Like it has thoughts and feelings?
- johnisgood 11mo agoI love bees and ants, but I love bees the most. I would recommend people to study the behavior of bees and ants. Additionally, honey, propolis, etc. are super healthy, and we can thank bees for that.
- baxtr 11mo agoNot that I want to curb your enthusiasm for bees, but… I recently read that honey bees in particular get the most attention from humans lately, so they are kept in high numbers. This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.
- johnisgood 11mo agoWhy would what you said curb my enthusiasm for bees though? Can you provide me more specifics on this by the way? > This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps. What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps? I do not mind bees having kept in higher numbers, and beekeepers can do it anywhere without affecting the ecosystem, I believe.
- baxtr 11mo agoI am no expert at all in this topic! So please take this with a grain of salt. I just have the feeling (maybe wrongly) that the love and focus for bees is having detrimental/ unwanted effects on the ecosystem. Here some more articles / discussions: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44505552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44505552 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44792207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44792207 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668879
- johnisgood 11mo agoMy love for bees is more about their behavior (similar to how I find ants fascinating), and their "products" that is honey, propolis, beeswax, and so on. I am simply fascinated by their behaviors, and propolis is very healthy!
- 867-5309 11mo agothat read like "source please" then "sauce is yummy"
- johnisgood 11mo agoI am not sure what you are trying to imply. If you are referring to what I asked: "What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps?", then all I have to say about it is that I am just genuinely curious.
- fullstop 11mo agoI have always been enamored with "social" insects like bees, wasps, and ants. I _loved_ SimAnt as a child. It also blows my mind that I utterly balk at eating insects but bee vomit is totally cool.
- johnisgood 11mo ago
- bijant 11mo agoI‘d give it a chance. After all it can’t be any worse than Seinfeld for Bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie
- gibspaulding 11mo agoThere’s something like four thousand species of bees native to North America [1], so while there are lots of reasons to be unenthusiastic about honey bees [2], that still leaves lots of room for bee related enthusiasm :) [1] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-role-native-bees-united-states https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-role-native-bees-united-state... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...
- rootbear 11mo agoAgreed! Bees are my favorite social insect (we share a love of hexagons, for one thing) and they seem to be especially intelligent.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jbnorth 11mo agoThe hexagon is the best-agon
- hackable_sand 11mo agoThis thread is awesome. I had a miniature war with some wasps staking a claim on my porch Let me say, wasps are incredibly endurant creatures. I have much respect for them. Their architecture though... I have the remnants of their enclave. It is so stable and uniform and cozy. I wish wasps were friends.
- cindyllm 11mo ago[dead]
- SoftTalker 11mo agoYellowjackets can go to hell though.
- johnisgood 11mo agoWell, kind of. :D Wasps do not produce honey, they just collect nectar and sugary substances for immediate consumption, and propolis is specifically a bee product made from tree resins. That said, wasps are still quite intelligent for insects with regarding to spatial memory, individual recognition, learning, problem-solving, and social cognition. In fact, their intelligence is comparable to honeybees in many respects. Contrary to popular belief, wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment. :)
- cj 11mo ago> wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment. Can confirm. I had a yellow jacket infestation in my kitchen wall this fall. Every day I'd wake up to dozens of bees flying around my kitchen. But they didn't care about me, all they cared about was getting outside. I probably killed 200-300 yellow jackets with a fly swatter over the course of 2 weeks. Somehow I wasn't stung once.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- testfrequency 11mo agoI promise this isn’t a trap, it’s just my curiosity as a “flexitarian”. What (mostly) keeps me from eating animals is my mind wandering sometimes when making a protein choice about how they ended up there, wherever I am, not by choice. Are you vegan?
- MangoToupe 11mo agoGoats are just as tasty if you raised them, IMO. Maybe even tastier.
- angiolillo 11mo agoBy "tastier" do you mean more physically pleasurable because you could ensure the animal's good health, ethically preferable because you could ensure a (mostly) good life, emotionally enjoyable because you can fondly remember interacting with them, or something else?
- MangoToupe 11mo agoI mean the goats I have today I only have because we bred them to be useful to us, and that being neurotic about the food we eat rarely helps any living thing. Of course I treat my goats well, and I love them. But this doesn't factor much into the ethics of why we eat them in the first place. If I didn't eat them they wouldn't exist. The entire problem is close to nonsensical.
- angiolillo 11mo agoI'm still not sure how that makes them "maybe even tastier" when you raise them yourself? > If I didn't eat them they wouldn't exist. Does that mean that if I bring something into existence that anything I choose do to it is therefore ethical, or is eating special? (To be clear, I think there are a number of solid arguments for eating animals, I just don't think that's one of them.)
- AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
- Loughla 11mo agoGrowing up on a farm taught me that animals are absolutely able to think and learn. Not in the same way as humans, but I'm fully convinced there are degrees of consciousness. Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
- kznewman 11mo agoThanks for this memory. I had similar experience watching spring lambs and swore off mutton/lamb/etc same day.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- travisgriggs 11mo agoI swore off lamb after trying to make a couple lamb stews. It is clearly an acquired taste if that.
- Loughla 11mo agoSee, I never swore off beef, even with that. I took it as a reason to make sure they live their best lives, and to do my best to ensure that their deaths are as quick and painless as possible. I understand the hypocrisy or whatever that might be, but beef has kept my family out of bankruptcy when full time job income has not. I do apologize and thank every animal, for whatever that's worth. It doesn't feel great, but such is life.
- meowface 11mo agoNot to go full-PETA, here, but I think there's a pretty decent chance that in 300 years you and your family and this comment will be looked back on like how we now look back on remarks about chattel slavery.
- aunty_helen 11mo agoOr that cows can quickly determine when an electric fence isn’t working and rampage a winter feed paddock in an hour.
- ilt 11mo agoConsciousness is a spectrum.
- 9991 11mo agoEven if that were true, how could you possibly know it?
- Ukv 11mo agoObserving animals' behavior (in the wild and through experiments like the one here) and studying how their brains work to see that they often have the same kind of mental features as us (including whichever you'd classify as consciousness) - just at varying degrees of sophistication. Some would argue that "consciousness" is something non-physical that has no impact on the physical world, and so is not physically detectable or responsible for any behavior, but I feel then it inherently cannot be whatever we mean by "consciousness" that we're directly aware of and talking about in the physical world (because that itself is a physical impact).
- verisimi 11mo ago... with insects on the low side, humans are mid, and dogs are top
- ilt 11mo agoDogs are on top but just below cats haha
- 47282847 11mo agoMaybe it is the same level of consciousness but different physical limitations? Simply imagine being locked in in an insect body with different perception and abilities, and a wiped memory.
- nextaccountic 11mo agoThen maybe orcas are much more conscious than us?
- dartharva 11mo agoI remember reading somewhere that bees have the highest cognitive abilities of all insects
- sethammons 11mo agoThinking of smart bugs, check out the portia (aka jumping) spider. They plan multi-step, out of sight detours to ambush prey, and demonstrate impulse control. They have specialized hunting techniques for different menu items, one such is mimicking specific prey items stuck on a web to lure various types of spiders out. Insect wise, bees have to take the cake. Symbolic communication and counting, and now time. This all tracks for something that needs to share the location of food with the colony. Nature sure is neat.
- pyth0 11mo agoInteresting you mention jumping spiders, I just saw a rather interesting video talking about exactly this and includes some interviews with scientists involved in some of these experiments [1]. One interesting fact I learned is that they have a sense of numeracy, and can distinguish between one, two and three-or-more objects. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QF6kaOAuYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QF6kaOAuYg
- tstrimple 11mo agoIf you read fiction you might find The Children of Time to be interesting. It follows the hyper accelerated evolution of jumping spiders to a sentient species that eventually has to coexist with humans. It leans on a lot of fact about jumping spiders and uses it as a jumping point to what their societies might look like if given the chance to evolve as the top predators.
- dartharva 11mo agoAaj, Children of Time reference! Always wondered why the author chose that specific species in his story, now it makes sense
- xnx 11mo agoThis is also what upsets me most about habitat destruction (aka global warming). We're burning books (making species extinct) that we haven't even read yet.