
Bees can train each other to use tools - tambourine_man
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/bees-can-train-each-other-to-use-tools/
======
anfractuosity
Nice, it just goes to show how intelligent they are.

There are so many cool things about bees.

In the paper "Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees"
they mention how bees can detect if other bees have harvested pollen from
flowers, based on an electric field.

Along with the waggle dance, their functioning in a colony.

Apparently they might let out a little vibration to express surprise when
another bee bumps into them
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2121275-honeybees-
let-o...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2121275-honeybees-let-out-a-
whoop-when-they-bump-into-each-other/)

Also they can apparently sense the earth's magnetic field -
[http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/pdfs/Bees.pdf](http://web.gps.caltech.edu/~jkirschvink/pdfs/Bees.pdf)

~~~
cestith
Also seen on Ars, it seems that bees when searching for consensus on big
decisions will try to quiet dissenters by head-butting them. Enough head butts
cause an individual to stop dancing for a while. This allows the remaining
dancing scouts to come to a single, unanimous decision. -
[https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/12/bees-reach-
consensus...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/12/bees-reach-consensus-by-
headbutting-dissenters/)

~~~
jly
What's amazing is that honeybees will almost always choose the _best_ option
for a new home within an area where options are explored. They do this because
scouts individually analyze an option before signaling their approval through
a dance. In other words, they don't just take the word of another bee, they
confirm and each "voter" is highly-informed. The idea painted in this article
I believe is more for helping to resolve deadlocks when there are more than
one high-quality choice. There are lessons even we can take away from the
democratic process honeybees use to choose a new home.

~~~
jon_richards
Some bees lie about what they've scouted though

~~~
rybosome
I genuinely can't tell if this is meant metaphorically or literally. Assuming
the former, lying suggests a level of consciousness that I don't expect bees
to have.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Though it depends whether it is intentionally a lie. If a bee suffers some
memory loss or otger failure of cognition causing them to think their position
was better / worse it isn't intentional.

~~~
rybosome
I think the definition of a "lie" implies intention. If one says something
that is not true which they genuinely believe to be true, that is a "mistake"
rather than a "lie".

So the scenario you are describing sounds totally plausible, but I would
phrase it as the bee making a mistake rather than lying. =)

~~~
cestith
It's not even necessarily a mistake. If one bee values proximity to apple
trees higher than proximity to peach trees and another bee values the
opposite, then they can have honest and valid differences of opinion about two
nesting sites.

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toothbrush
When "even" bees are intelligent enough to teach each other skills, i really
marvel at the mental gymnastics/machinery that goes into convincing oneself
that humans are somehow a class apart from animals, and it's totally okay to
eat them after having kept them pent up in atrocious conditions. _Makes mental
note to be a better vegetarian_

(and FWIW: i'm not being morally superior here: i believe that in reality,
probably being vegan is the only morally defensible position, but the flesh
being weak and all... And in _actual_ fact, probably even that is a tricky
position: by surviving one is probably making the calculated decision
(conscious or not) to put one's own survival above the cost of some other's
demise.)

~~~
stanfordkid
Either that -- or our perception of morality is wrong.

Maybe it's okay to eat animals as long as we treat them well. After all if
they live a long happy and decently full life that's what really counts right?

I think this video really gives a good idea of how humanity used to think of
hunting and eating animals:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o)

We've really lost touch with our empathy for other creatures

In the old days people would respect the animal, hug it after killing it... on
some level I think animals understand that their own death is a part of life.

~~~
wewiereiuyui
If someone lets you live a happy life then hunts you down and kills you to
eat, is that OK with you ? If it's ok for you to rule on the life of a pig,
say, then why isn't it ok for another human to decide on your life ?

(I _really_ don't agree with this position - just playing devil's advocate)

~~~
mehwoot
_If someone lets you live a happy life then hunts you down and kills you to
eat, is that OK with you_

Yes, definitely. If the alternative was that I didn't exist at all- most pigs
wouldn't be around if we didn't eat them
([https://xkcd.com/1338/](https://xkcd.com/1338/)).

The way I ethically decide whether it's ok to eat meat is whether, if that
animal could express a choice, it would likely choose to exist and then be
eaten or not exist at all. If an animal is kept in so much pain that it would
rather not exist, then I think that's unethical. But if it would still choose
to exist, then it's better than nothing- don't forget that living in the wild
is generally a pretty harsh life as well.

~~~
tillom
I get what your saying. I think you've set a really low bar for how you
decided wether something is good or bad though.

For me something doesn't become ethical when an animal can just about tolerate
bad conditions.

I cant give you a hard line for where I decide, but it's not that.

What about if an animal can have some positive experiences of a wild animal
(some space) with fewer of the negatives (very painful death). We have given
them a better alternative arguably.

~~~
stanfordkid
There really isn't a "good" or "bad" ... there is only "nature" ... and it's a
beautiful hierarchical food-chain that should be appreciated and understood by
all elements within it. Humans are one of the few that have the capacity to
fully understand it. Sadly they still do not recognize the inherently
hierarchical nature of even human society and this leads both the people at
the bottom and top to hate each other.

Humans are the only creatures that have somehow attached themselves to this
strange idea that controlling their pleasure and pain response (rather than
their freedom) is the most important thing in the world.

Society and civilization should exist but only to protected freedom-- that
doesn't mean that everyone should or can be happy. But rather freedom to
compete and continue the threads of nature is what is important. Nature above
all else.

------
logicallee
The researchers recorded the following transcript, translated from bees'
dance, a few months after introducing git to the colony:

"No you stupid wasp, how many times have I told you, YOU DO NOT REBASE A
SHARED BRANCH. Never, ever, ever. If I see you do that again I swear to God I
am telling the queen."

------
yawz
Hobbyist beekeeper, here. One of the most fascinating things about bee
communication (IMHO) is not necessarily the two distinct types of dances they
do, or not the precision on the distance and the direction of the target, but
doing all that in the pitch darkness of their hive.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
That got me interested and lead me to this but of Wikipedia which claims they
perceive the dance by detecting vibrations and electric field changes:

 _Dancing honeybees (Apis mellifera) describe the location of nearby food
sources by emitted airborne sound signals. These signals consist of rhythmic
high-velocity movement of air particles. These near field sounds are received
and interpreted using the Johnston’s organ in the pedicel of the antennae.[10]
Honeybees also perceive electric field changes via the Johnston 's organs in
their antennae and possibly other mechano-receptors. Electric fields generated
by movements of the wings cause displacements of the antennae based on
Coulomb’s law. Neurons of the Johnston’s organ respond to movements within the
range of displacements caused by electric fields. When the antennae were
prevented from moving at the joints containing the Johnston’s organ, bees no
longer responded to biologically relevant electric fields. Honeybees respond
differently to different temporal patterns. Honeybees appear to use the
electric field emanating from the dancing bee for distance communication._

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston%27s_organ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston%27s_organ)

~~~
Typhon
It _is_ fascinating indeed.

------
vcdimension
There are many advantages in training animals to perform tasks rather than
building machines to do them. Animals are far more intelligent than current
machines, more robust, well adapted to our environment, don't polute, require
few/zero raw materials (with the associated environmental costs), have
low/zero production costs, etc.

I would much prefer to live in an environment of plants and animals than one
of concrete and metal.

The bottleneck is in the training, and this is where technology could play a
part. Robotics and machine learning algorithms could be employed to improve
the training process (for example see here:
[http://thecrowbox.com/](http://thecrowbox.com/)).

~~~
asciimo
Once you conscript animals into human society they do require tremendous
resources and they do pollute. You can look at animal agriculture for an
extreme example. It's easy to forget that animals are very inefficient
resources because they use most of their input to simply survive, rather than
"produce."

~~~
ChuckMcM
Imagine a bunch of different animals all working together to actually run the
farm :-)

More seriously though your observation arises from speed and density, not
activity. Consider chickens for example, which if you have a couple dozen
chickens using a hectare (~2.5 acres) to live on their feeding and feces are
completely supported in the existing cycles of that land (presuming non-
desert, non-arctic). What gets it out of control is when you want 2000 hens
laying in a single building on less than an acre. High density, imported feed,
waste disposal becomes and issue, etc.

~~~
asciimo
True. Add to that the farming of the grains you're feeding the animals, 90% of
which will not be reclaimed in the final product.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_efficiency))

------
intrasight
I'm at a loss for words. First spiders that can strategize
[[http://thescienceexplorer.com/nature/jumping-spiders-
smarter...](http://thescienceexplorer.com/nature/jumping-spiders-smarter-
average-spider)]. Now bees that can tech tool use.

------
spraak
I'm not very surprised, but glad that this has been validated. I've always
felt that bees are very intelligent.

------
exBarrelSpoiler
If only more tech companies can learn from bees for when they do on-boarding!

~~~
navs
You mean you want tech companies to attack you when you're just putting up
your laundry?

/me is a recent victim of a Bee attack

~~~
yawz
Sorry to hear that. Was that a honey bee or a wasp? Usually those unprovoked
attacks come from wasps.

~~~
coldcode
Africanized bees will do that too.

~~~
TehJIDF
That's racist.

