Can an Insect Speak? The Case of the Honeybee Dance Language
نویسنده
چکیده
In this paper I investigate the scientific understanding of the honeybee dance language. I elucidate the implicit and explicit reasons why the honeybees’ communication system has been referred to as a ‘language’, and examine the ways this designation has entangled the themes of animal mind and human– animal continuity. I end with an investigation of a scientific controversy surrounding the honeybee dance language. I argue that this controversy was a battle over assumptions regarding insect capacities, and a willingness or unwillingness to abandon those assumptions in the face of a phenomenon that undermined them.
منابع مشابه
East Learns from West: Asiatic Honeybees Can Understand Dance Language of European Honeybees
The honeybee waggle dance, through which foragers advertise the existence and location of a food source to their hive mates, is acknowledged as the only known form of symbolic communication in an invertebrate. However, the suggestion, that different species of honeybee might possess distinct 'dialects' of the waggle dance, remains controversial. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether different...
متن کاملگزشهای متعدد زنبور عسل: گزارش چهار مورد
Background: Insect stings can cause local or systemic reactions that range from mild to fatal, and are among the most common causes of anaphylaxis. The major allergens of honeybee venom are phospholipase A2, hyaluronidase, acid phosphatase, allergen C and melitin. Phospholipase and melitin induce hemolysis, rhabdomyolysis and liver damage due to cell membrane breakdown, damage of the vascular e...
متن کاملThe honeybee waggle dance: can we follow the steps?
The honeybee (Apis mellifera) waggle dance, whereby dancing bees communicate the location of profitable food sources to other bees in the hive, is one of the most celebrated communication behaviours in the animal world. Dance followers, however, often appear to ignore this location information, the so-called dance language, after leaving the nest. Here we consider why foragers follow dances and...
متن کاملAnalysis of the Waggle Dance Motion of Honeybees for the Design of a Biomimetic Honeybee Robot
The honeybee dance "language" is one of the most popular examples of information transfer in the animal world. Today, more than 60 years after its discovery it still remains unknown how follower bees decode the information contained in the dance. In order to build a robotic honeybee that allows a deeper investigation of the communication process we have recorded hundreds of videos of waggle dan...
متن کاملHoneybee dance language: is it overrated?
In a recent article inTREE, Grüter and Farina [1] point out that in honeybee dance language the communication of spatial (navigational) information is embedded in several additional informational components. As a consequence, followers of dances do not need to perceive or use the spatial information encoded in the dances to show adaptive foraging behavior. However, whether this is sufficient to...
متن کامل