[HN Gopher] How Bees Argue
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       How Bees Argue
        
       Author : imartin2k
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2020-01-08 06:37 UTC (16 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.overcomingbias.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.overcomingbias.com)
        
       | dsalzman wrote:
       | I don't beelieve it!
        
       | pmoskovi wrote:
       | Inspired by the behavior of bees and the Seeley's Honeybee
       | Democracy book, I created and gave a talk, titled Extreme
       | Cooperation of Superorganisms - Four Lessons Humans Can Learn
       | from Bees: https://slides.com/petermoskovits/superorganism/
        
       | tboyd47 wrote:
       | Takeaways:
       | 
       | * It is meaningful to speak of animals having "opinions" but it's
       | not clear how those match up with human ones.
       | 
       | * Individual opinion is guided by a combination of random chance
       | and direct perception.
       | 
       | * Individual bee opinions have low success rate, but group
       | consensus of bees has an extremely high success rate.
       | 
       | * Opinions acquired via transmission are more weakly held than
       | opinions acquired directly.
       | 
       | * Wrong opinions are held more weakly than right opinions. I find
       | this fascinating because it means there's some information that
       | would not be revealed without the bees challenging each other.
       | 
       | * Opinions are often never changed in an individual, even if they
       | are wrong.
        
       | monkeycantype wrote:
       | The most interesting thing I've ever seen was an argument between
       | ants. As a student I worked on a project to use California grey
       | ants for pest control in peach orchards 'Formica aerata' (it's
       | very effective). This involved capturing wild colonies (digging
       | them up) and breeding them in captivity. To move the colony from
       | the box of dug up dirt to the enclosure, I coated the inside of
       | the box with liquid Teflon (future cancer risk?) and slowly
       | flooded the box, the only way out was a bridge to the new
       | enclosure. Over the next ten hours the ants would compete, some
       | moving eggs and larvae to the new enclosure, some moving them
       | back to the queen. Eventually, when the rising flood had
       | converted enough of the workers to the cause of the revolution,
       | they will make an attempt to move the queen, which she and and a
       | coiterie of anti-diluvianists would resist. The bridge to new
       | enclosure would be a solid mass of writhing black (like Venom
       | from Spider-Man). The queen, noticeably larger than the workers
       | would repeat an escape and climb back over the living bridge to
       | the steadily submerging dirt pile again and again, until
       | eventually overwhelmed she was dragged by the masses to the new
       | home, flailing and struggling all the way.
        
         | Arnavion wrote:
         | (Imagining "anti-diluvianist" ants cracked me up, especially
         | because of the double pun.)
         | 
         | Does that mean the ants were unable to communicate the upcoming
         | danger to each other and had to rely on first-hand observation?
         | That's surprising given how much they communicate otherwise.
        
           | monkeycantype wrote:
           | I don't know, but the way I thought about it is that I
           | imagined each ant was quite simple, and the fight was a
           | distributed mind weighing the sum of the fractions of reality
           | perceived by each individual
        
           | CobrastanJorji wrote:
           | Could be a security mechanism. Moving a queen would be risky.
           | A large number of ants would be necessary to move the queen
           | if she always resisted, which means a very small chance of
           | false positives or a malicious mis-signal.
        
         | newnewpdro wrote:
         | Please tell me you recorded video of this.
        
           | monkeycantype wrote:
           | No - was pre digital cameras - but others have since
        
             | rolltiide wrote:
             | link to one of those kind of videos?
        
               | monkeycantype wrote:
               | https://youtu.be/deuI0s4VlAs
               | 
               | Again on train on broken phone, haven't watched this but
               | it takes you into the YouTube space of ant keepers
        
             | ydnaclementine wrote:
             | Is there a video of that exact process? (not sure what to
             | search)
        
               | monkeycantype wrote:
               | Im on the train on half broken phone, so this is not a
               | well researched response
               | 
               | moving+ant+colony+to+enclosure+queen
               | 
               | flooding formicarium
               | 
               | Workers move queen ant
               | 
               | Seem to be returning promising videos
        
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       (page generated 2020-01-08 23:00 UTC)