
The Sweet Emotional Life of Bees - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/science/bees-emotion-sugar.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
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afandian
As a beekeeper, and one who does it for the bees rather than the honey (one
kind of emotional motivation rather than another), there's a balance to be
struck when using human emotions to describe bees (beyond the simplistic
"don't anthropomorphize").

I blogged about it yesterday: [http://blog.afandian.com/2016/09/first-
honey/](http://blog.afandian.com/2016/09/first-honey/)

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peterlk
My friend worked for several years in undergrad on whether or not bees had
individual personalities (this was her simplified description to me). So I
asked her whether bees did have individual personalities, and her response was
a flat "Nope".

The "emotions" that they're describing here are really more like states in a
finite state machine. Calling them emotions obfuscates the science.

However, there might be a fun angle to building a brain out of increasingly
complex emotional FSMs.

