Honeybees Might Have Emotions

[amborin]

Honeybees Might Have Emotions

Honeybees have become the first invertebrates to exhibit pessimism, a benchmark cognitive trait supposedly limited to “higher” animals.
.....And pessimism is no mean feat: It’s a form of cognitive bias, considered in humans to be an aspect of emotion. You can’t be pessimistic if you don’t have an inner life

If these honeybee blues are interpreted as they would be in dogs or horses or humans, then insects might have feelings.
....Honeybee response “has more in common with that of vertebrates than previously thought,” wrote Newcastle University researchers Melissa Bateson and Jeri Wright in their bee study, published June 2 in Current Biology. The findings “suggest that honeybees could be regarded as exhibiting emotions.”

snip

......“The methodology is sound,” said Lori Marino, an Emory University evolutionary neurobiologist who was not involved in the study. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they are tapping into bee emotions. After all, every animal has to have emotions in order to learn and to make decisions. And we already know from many other studies that bees are really cognitively sophisticated.”


In future studies, Bateson hopes to elicit from honeybees other forms of apparent emotion, such as happiness. She also wonders about the mental effects of chemicals and disease.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/honeybee-pessimism/

[Motown_Johnny]

1. How long until someone blames the honeybee's remorse on Obama?

Sorry to step on your thread.


Interesting.


Just think of this as a really crappy kick, I will also give it a rec for good measure

[anamandujano]

18. Since they're still mired in fighting for the vote . . . .

never mind.

Back on topic--in past years, when there was lots of rain, we had lots of sunflowers and the bees looked happy (to me) flitting from one flower to another, tiny bodies weighed down with pollen, knowing they would never run out of nectar.

Add to that, I'm always excited to see a bee these days.

[Sherman A1]

........

:banghead:

[Sherman A1]

22. ........

:banghead:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. Remarkable.

As we learn and learn, we discover that we are not the only creatures that get sad, or feel hopeless.

[yellerpup]

3. In the beginning of the world people and animals

could speak and understand each other's languages, according to Cherokee tradition. If we were more attuned to the other species, we could understand their messages. I think of the SETI program and laugh. How is it that we think that we will be able to communicate with beings from outer space when we can't even communicate with all the species on our own planet? Whales, dolphins, dogs, honeybees--whatever. Hooray science. Animals think, feel, and communicate all the time. We just don't speak their language any more.

[Lucinda]

25. I can/do to a very very tiny degree.

Wish I could do it better.

[yellerpup]

27. Me, too.

The more you observe, the more you understand. I grew up around all kinds of farm animals. Now I keep cats and my husband has noticed how remarkably well-trained I am since we adopted Penny. :hi:

[Lucinda]

28. LOL - Observation is the key. And I'm very well trained too.

Yogi (the cat) will come into my office and I usually know weather he wants out, water (he's a sink drinker) or a snack.

[tblue37]

38. _The Tribe of Tiger_ and _The Hidden Life of Dogs_ are

two wonderful books about the alien intelligences close to home that we should be studying more systematically: cats and dogs. (They are both by novelist/ethologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.)

[yellerpup]

45. I'm sure I would enjoy both those books.

Thanks for the recommendation. :hi:

[tblue37]

50. I am sure you will too. Happy reading! nt

[panader0]

4. I'm sure they have anger.

I bought a hive some years ago. I picked it up in Tucson at 6 am, all sealed with duct tape. By the time I got back home, 90 miles away, they were some pissed off bees. While unloading the hive, the tape let go and thousands of angry bees came for revenge.
I got stung about ten times, but my buddy got hit about thirty and got sick for a few days.

[BeFree]

8. Anger? Or just scared?

Is being scared an emotion? Do animals get scared?

[kestrel91316]

15. Well, I know cats show fear. But anger seems to be their strong suit, lol.

[sarge43]

34. When the weather isn't to their liking - chilly, damp, windy,

our bees sounds like Dragon Spit Leaf Blower 3000. When it's their favorite kind, they make a soft humming, almost a mummer.

They're a very complex animal. Wouldn't surprise me if they have emotions.

[Doctor Hurt]

5. very dubious.

The brain architecture of an insect differs so radically from ours. That serotonin and dopamine levels are tied to specific emotive states in us is a consequence of the architecture, more than the neurotransmitter. No reason similar distributions in an insect brain should do the same thing, given that their wiring is so very different from ours.

[Desertrose]

9. Do emotions only reside in the "brain" of a being?

or perhaps elsewhere....??

:shrug:

[Doctor Hurt]

14. yes.

there is nothing elsewhere.

[JDPriestly]

19. How can we be so sure?

Doesn't a bee have a nervous system?

Maybe the question is how you define "emotion."

I think they are talking about behavioral patterns that appear to be motivated by "emotions." Of course, the behavioral patterns could be dictated by a differently organized nervous system. Maybe bees' "emotions" are not controlled by their brains. Maybe our brains are to some extent electrical currents that other animals develop or sense through other means, other organs -- like their skin.

[adigal]

29. New thought believes that we "think" in our guts, too

You know when you feel in your gut that something is wrong? They are finding neurotransmitters and receptors in our stomachs, not just our brains. I don't remember where I read this, but it was a reputable source.

[tblue37]

39. Douglas Hofstadter's book _I am a Strange Loop_ is

a great read on the theory of sentience and consciousness. (He also wrote the brilliant book Godel, Escher, Bach. His area of expertise is the science of mind.)

[JDPriestly]

41. Neurotransmitters are two directiona in us humans.

I had an accident a few years ago and could, for several years, feel just how my foot caught on something and catapulted my body forward. The memory was in my foot and then it traveled to my mind. I could actually feel the memory in the heel of my foot.

That's the way the human mind works. But other animals could experience different sensory, memory and emotional processes. I don't think we can rule it out.

And I could not say whether the memory was in my foot and acknowledged by my brain or the other way around.

[Desertrose]

23. And you know this how exactly?

It is true that for some people, there is nothing else, nothing beyond the "physical brain" but that is pretty much because they choose not to see anything else.

Of course there's more, to assume that we see and know all there is is the absolute height of hubris.

[Hawkowl]

42. The endocrine system

I seriously doubt we could emote much of anything without the endocrine system.

[amborin]

11. not dubious, according to those who study bees' brains

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438803001715

[Doctor Hurt]

13. The article didn't ask me for a quote.

I wonder if I need to publish more.

[localroger]

31. Every brain structure we have, is shared with animals

...many of them going back to insects. The organ corresponding to the cerebral cortex, you know the thing commonly associated with our massive difference from every other animal, is used in lower animals to process olfactory information. If they aren't using it to build nucular bombs it follows that they were using it for something, and with presumably the same basic circuitry and connectivity (if less of it) than we have.

It is entirely reasonable to suspect that evolution has created multiple emotional systems which function similarly but use different chemical messengers and neural architecture. In fact, if you get into any of the admittedly primitive speculation on how to construct an AI, you find a general consensus that without something like emotions no organism would have any motivation to do anything no matter how well equipped it might be to reason through problems.

[alphafemale]

6. Why do I have to be a fucking slave? Huh?..buzzbuzz..Who died and made that bitch queen anyway? nt

[Doctor Hurt]

17. The queen, though, is as much as slave as all the others

it's not like she runs anything. The hive itself is the organism. The queen is simply the reproductive organs for the hive.

[sarge43]

35. Recent studies are point toward the nurse bees being the brains of the outfit.

They seem to make the decisions about production of more drones, the general health of the hive in general and the queen in particular, population control, etc.

[Doctor Hurt]

36. I suspect nurse bees are rather like "hub neurons" in a network

They aggregate information from a variety of other bees (also acting as neurons) and route it to the appropriate effectors.

Mostly I've been looking at ant hives lately, but I think a similar dynamic is at work.

[sarge43]

43. That would follow

Plus, being the youngest and most vigorous, the most bang for buck.

[daleo]

37. And they have MBAs

Masters of Beeswax Administration.

[sarge43]

46. Excellent

I'll pass that on to the inhouse beekeeper.

[sarge43]

44. As long as there's honey flow (available nectar and pollen) young healthy queen

will lay a thousand to 1500 eggs a day. She's probably not envied all that much.

[Maru Kitteh]

7. I love bees. They're awesome. n/t

[Kablooie]

12. I like their knees.

[JDPriestly]

20. I love bees too. They pollinate my tomatoes and my avocados just to start.

In the spring we get a backyard full of little yellow sorrel flowers under our trees. My husband always has the urge to weedwhack them out of existence. But I learned the hard way that I have to let them take over for a few months.

That is because they attract many, many bees. The flowers, the bees and the buds that turn into fruits and vegetables are all part of a wonderfully creative cycle. It is really very exciting to watch.

I have tiny baby squash and bean plants coming out of the earth. And in their time they will enjoy the visits from the bees. How perfectly nature works together -- like an orchestra.

[Lucinda]

26. It is amazingly beautiful to watch.

Loved your post. ♥ :)

[Maru Kitteh]

30. Lol at you standing in defense of the flowers & hubby w/ weedwhacker - mine is the SAME WAY!

I have an ornamental Japanese maple in front. Always the last thing in the yard to set leaves. Every year

Hubby: "I'm going to dig that tree out of the front this weekend, it's dead"
Me: "Leave it alone dear, it'll get leaves in a few weeks."

Hubby: "I'm going to weedwhack that plot in the front, there's a bunch of spikey weeds growing in it"
Me "No dear, those are the purple flox and the lilies. They'll bloom in a few weeks."

:rofl: I know exactly what you feel like.

[JDPriestly]

40. Don't get me wrong. My husband is great. But he gets annoyed with

all the tacky looking yellow flowers that completely fill our back yard. They are a bit much to look at, but in California I consider anything that grows to be a welcome blessing.

[sarge43]

47. Honey bee pollination can increase crop production by 40%

Honey bees: They take very little and give much in return.

[WillyT]

10. Yep...

:D

:hi:

[Mulhane]

16. Explains Hive Decline?

Like the Middle class, the rise of toxic Agribiz Capitalism has stressed out bee society and they miss the way thing were before bioengineering and indiscriminate pollution. Pessimism indeed.

[Buns_of_Fire]

21. Bee drones mate once and then die, after their reproductive organs are pretty-much ripped out...

Hell, wouldn't that fill YOU with a slightly-less-than-optimistic attitude about it all?

[localroger]

32. Maybe bee drones tend toward masochism? /nt

[Lucinda]

24. Very interesting read. Thankie!

[MilesColtrane]

33. Sounds logical.

We've certainly got our share of pessimistic drones in the DU hive.

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cannikin]

49. I've always thought of emotions as being left-over survival instincts.

I've never understood why some consider it as a higher brain function.

[rainparkotherthings]

51. Newsflash: they also have souls

Animals, insects, and some humanoids...