[HN Gopher] Bumble bees play, according to new research
___________________________________________________________________
Bumble bees play, according to new research
Author : pseudolus
Score : 159 points
Date : 2022-10-28 10:08 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| chomp wrote:
| From the original study:
|
| > We found that ball rolling (1) did not contribute to immediate
| survival strategies, (2) was intrinsically rewarding, (3)
| differed from functional behaviour in form, (4) was repeated but
| not stereotyped, and (5) was initiated under stress-free
| conditions.
|
| ...
|
| > We suggest that the behaviour observed here has actual hedonic
| value for bumble bees, which adds to the growing body of evidence
| of a form of sentience in these insects
| nescioquid wrote:
| The researches adduce from those five findings that ball-
| rolling holds hedonic value for bumble bees.
|
| One of those findings was that ball-rolling is "intrinsically
| rewarding" to a bee.
|
| Isn't this what you call "begging the question"? It's hedonic
| because it is intrinsically rewarding.
|
| The article ends with the quote:
|
| "We are producing ever-increasing amounts of evidence backing
| up the need to do all we can to protect insects that are a
| million miles from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are
| traditionally believed to be."
|
| It gives me the impression the findings are driven by the
| agenda to save the bees. Which makes me feel conflicted since I
| support the aim and have lay interests in philosophy of mind.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > Isn't this what you call "begging the question"? It's
| hedonic because it is intrinsically rewarding.
|
| I think what they mean is that it was not connected to an
| _external_ reward (at least not one that the researchers
| could identify). For example, they did not train the bees to
| roll the ball in order to get sugar water or something.
| [deleted]
| LegitShady wrote:
| I guess the question is how you would describe something like
| listening to music for a human. It would be 'intrinsically
| rewarding' and 'hedonic'. Why? because of our brain
| structures? Hard to say.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Begging the question is when you conclude one of your
| assumptions. "That it's intrinsically rewarding" is a finding
| not an assumption.
|
| The study was definitely influenced by the popular notion of
| saving the bees, but that's not a problem! I'd rather read
| about bees having fun than any other insect! I hope others
| feel the same and a friendlier sentiment towards bees
| (because of the study, a little bit) helps the whole problem.
| nescioquid wrote:
| They said that because there's no apparent reason for the
| behavior, it must be "intrinsically rewarding". Is that
| really a proven conclusion, or a working premise?
|
| It's listed on equal footing with the observation that bees
| don't engage in the behavior under stress (also a finding).
| The later can be observed, while the former seems to need
| access to the inner experience of the organism.
| comfypotato wrote:
| You sound interested enough that you might enjoy bits of
| the actual paper [1].
|
| They didn't exactly say the bees stopped playing under
| stress. Instead they said the behavior isn't a stress
| response (they know this because they eliminated stress
| from the environment). Also, the evidence that it's
| inherently rewarding is bolstered by the pattern of
| interaction with balls. It increases over time and then
| drops (typical of play), and it is unrelated to mate/food
| finding.
|
| It's very difficult to know what animals are thinking.
| The scientists say multiple times in different ways that
| none of this is conclusive (the longest section regarding
| knowing the behavior isn't function-related). That being
| said, it's a well designed experiment in my opinion. I
| think they did a good job of setting it up so that we can
| conclude: "why else would they roll the balls?"
|
| 1. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samadi-
| Galpayage/public...
| nescioquid wrote:
| Okay -- thanks for being patient; appreciate the link to
| the paper and additional detail.
|
| I see the "question begging" emerged from me
| misconstruing the quotes from the paper above. I think I
| was especially skeptical because I wanted to believe the
| conclusion.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Not very surprising. We, as a whole, do not recognize
| intelligence in other creatures because it makes it so much
| easier to do anything with or to them. Damn shame for a number of
| reasons
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| Watch the video of the bumblebee rolling a ball, it is incredibly
| cute.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| https://theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/16/bees-are-rea...
| csallen wrote:
| _> ...insects... are a million miles from the mindless, unfeeling
| creatures they are traditionally believed to be._
|
| Is it truly a common belief that insects are mindless and
| unfeeling? I would imagine the vast majority of people, when
| polled, would guess that insects have some form of consciousness
| and feeling.
|
| Of course, that doesn't stop people from squashing or swatting
| them when they get in the way. In fact, it hasn't fully stopped
| people from killing other people either.
| scoofy wrote:
| I think it's extremely hard to say, but I'd say it's hard to
| argue for sentience when the neural system is so small.
|
| This is a serious problem in philosophy. The concepts of
| "philosophical zombies" is a hard problem. The fact is that we
| could have perfectly "sentient behavior" from creatures/beings
| without any sensible consciousness involved. The sentience of
| humans is debatable, even though it is readily apparent that we
| experience qualia.
|
| Unless you're willing to accept that a rock, or a series of
| silicon chips, or even a massive _mechanical_ computing machine
| can have consciousness, the blurry edge of where neural systems
| go from being electric discharges to a vehicle for qualia is an
| extremely difficult question.
| version_five wrote:
| Is there something we know about the relationship between
| conciousness/sentience and the size of brain?
|
| A computer neural network can be arbitrarily large and there
| is no evidence it will ever become sentient. While we're
| related to insects and afaik share some functions. I can
| definitely picture the idea of their conciousness just being
| a more basic version of ours. But I'm curious if there is
| some evidence or reasoning that actually conciousness emerges
| as some threshold gets crossed
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean, we don't know. We literally don't know where or how
| consciousness exists. We just know that we have it, and we
| try to extrapolate backwards.
|
| Is it a product of the prefrontal cortex? Arguably. Is it
| the product of the mammalian mind? Seems plausible. The
| product of a small-but-thresholded nervous system? I think
| many would agree here. Is it the product of any nervous
| system? Doubtful, but maybe. Is it the product of any
| electrical system? Who knows, it's possible. Is it an
| innate part of matter? I mean...
|
| Are insects conscious? I'm skeptical. Are mussels and/or
| oysters conscious? I'm _very_ skeptical. Are plants
| conscious? I 'm _extremely_ skeptical.
| throwaway3838g wrote:
| One could imagine that human's would appear unconscious to a
| hyper intelligent alien species. Perhaps it's all relative.
| scoofy wrote:
| You're conflating consciousness with intelligence. The two
| are not the same.
|
| One is the experience of qualia, and the ability to hold
| preferences.
|
| The other is the behaviors associated with making
| predictions and intentionally manipulating the world to
| achieve tasks.
|
| We have a hyper-intelligent chess engines that cannot be
| argued to be conscious. We also have small mammalian minds,
| like Koalas, that are dumb as a brick, but are very likely
| conscious.
| ilkke wrote:
| I am not entirely prepared to accept that koalas have
| small mammalian minds
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I realized recently there's no evidence that they don't,
| but a wealth of evidence that they do.
|
| I watch animals very closely now and I see more all the
| time that they are just like me in most ways. I suppose I
| used to watch them as a person who eats them, and my
| comfort with doing so depended on not seeing them as
| conscious creatures like me. Now that I don't eat them,
| it's as though there are more similarities than there are
| differences.
|
| I suspect if animals could speak, we'd realize they're
| remarkably similar to us. This probably sounds ridiculous
| to many people, and would have to me once too.
|
| A key part of this is not that I'm elevating animals'
| conscience to that of humans so much as lowering humans'.
| We tend to think we're exceptional, but I think our
| exception is probably just intelligence. The rest, I
| don't know, I suspect we're all very much alike.
| throwaway3838g wrote:
| That's a good point. I suppose then, to a hyper
| intelligent alien species we would be the Koala's,
| unintelligent but conscious.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I am hypo intelligent, but my coworkers definitely appear
| unconscious. Incomplete, ill-posed statement fragments over
| chat or better yet, in needless "sync" meetings.
|
| Insects display unbelievable forms intelligence to anyone
| that pays attention.
| contravariant wrote:
| The word 'drone' refers to male bees or ants and seems to
| derive from an old Germanic word for insect.
|
| Not saying etymology is the best indication for what people
| think, but there is a connection there.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| In other bee-related, but different type, news today:
|
| "Honeybee Swarms Can Produce as Much Electric Charge as a Storm
| Cloud" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/honeybee-swarms-
| ca...
|
| Note: Title is incorrect. They're actually talking in terms of
| charge density.
|
| _" As far as electricity generation goes, a bee swarm's charge
| isn't too impressive: It would take about 50 billion bees to
| power an LED light, Popular Science reports. But compared to the
| charges produced by common weather events, the bees' charge
| density was six times greater than an electrified dust storm and
| eight times greater than a thunderstorm cloud."_
| stvnbn wrote:
| I don't know why we believe animals are so different than us and
| then we get so surprised when they do things like us. We're like
| them!
| moosey wrote:
| Lacking evidence otherwise, I would say that we have to assume
| the internal experience of most life with central nervous
| systems are remarkably similar to ours, because we are
| remarkably similar.
|
| The next step is to take this into account in ethics, but I
| fear this is a leap that humanity in totality will not make
| easily.
| bmitc wrote:
| I agree. It's like we forget that we're literally one of
| millions, billions, or trillions (it seems the estimated count
| is an open question) of species on this planet. No other
| species _could possibly_ share analogous behavior.
| scoofy wrote:
| "Play" as a concept, is a clear social construct.
|
| The behaviors we call "play" is very obviously an innate
| instinctual behavior for humans, and is entirely plausible the
| same for bees.
|
| I see little here to suggest that this implies sentience apart
| from simple anthropomorphism.
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the framework of the
| evolutionary dogma as I know it, this behavior wouldn't make
| sense. It comes at the expense of energy and time, yielding no
| benefit, and thus is a net detriment and should therefore be
| bred out of the species with the one exception being some sort
| of higher process like emotional gratification.
|
| At least I can't imagine any sort of logical pattern where this
| improves fitness other than because it is emotionally
| gratifying, which I would posit necessarily intersects with
| biology beyond the very simplistic instinctual-automaton model.
| throwanem wrote:
| > biology beyond the very simplistic instinctual-automaton
| model
|
| This concept belongs to behaviorism, which is one school of
| thought in biology. Its massive and unjustifiable dominance
| in the benighted 20th century notwithstanding, it is far from
| the only one. My experience has been that the results of
| ethological research into hymenopteran behavior, at least,
| yield far more predictive power than much of anything from
| the behaviorist school. It would not at all surprise me if
| this were one case in a much broader pattern.
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean, I'm no expert, but I think this position is more than
| a bit rigid. We know that evolutionary development
| _probabilistically_ yields maximized efficiency, but we also
| know there is plenty of room for drift and it can be a bit
| random.
|
| E.g. anti-fragile behaviors likely yield the best outcomes,
| even if they are less efficient, because the ultimate
| evolutionary failure is extinction (not death). Highly
| regular, efficient behavior are great for the individuals
| survival, but terrible for the species survival.
| comfypotato wrote:
| The play could also have benefits evolutionarily. While the
| behavior take energy, it teaches motor skills (which is
| more relevant to the younger bees who played more). I'm
| just using this (admittedly weak) example to show that play
| isn't necessarily less than optimal behavior.
| cad1 wrote:
| There used to be a bumble bee that, I was convinced, would come
| around to play with my dog, a Labrador. It was entertaining to
| watch. When the dog was outside the bumble bee would hover near
| his face to get his attention. Once he noticed the bee he would
| growl, jump, and bite at the bee but not in an aggressive manor.
| It was in his playful tone, the same as when I played with him
| and his toys. Every time he lunged at the bee it would dart back
| and always stay just out of reach. Then the bee would zoom in
| closer and they would repeat this for a few minutes until one of
| them would get distracted. As far as I know they never made
| direct contact. RIP good boy
| silisili wrote:
| Are you sure it wasn't a male carpenter bee? That's pretty
| standard(annoying) behavior for them.
| throwanem wrote:
| They have no stingers and, if you hold still, so will they.
| Fascinating to watch, although one did once try to crawl into
| my ear.
| he11ow wrote:
| Paying it forward:
|
| An article by David Graeber I first saw here, where he argues the
| utilitarian evolutionary view (every action witnessed in animals
| is there to somehow increase changes of survival) is a relic of
| the industrial revolution. Instead, he says, playing is a key
| feature of life.
|
| https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-hav...
| abfan1127 wrote:
| what says play doesn't increase the chance of survival?
| guerrilla wrote:
| If you spend any time researching play at all, you'll find
| that's pretty much a universal view among scientists who
| study it. It's essential training and learning for survival.
| Love Graeber, RIP, but if that's something he claimed then
| he's unfortunately off on that one.
| Vrondi wrote:
| I thought that it has long since been understood that any trait
| which does not inhibit reproduction is ignored by natural
| selection, and therefore does not get "weeded out" by the
| process of evolution. This is why there can be long standing
| diversity within populations.
| throwanem wrote:
| I love the optimism, but regret to report that this simple
| aspect of natural selection is anything _but_ widely
| understood.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-28 23:00 UTC)