Might this bee be blue?
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If you’ve never watched bees carefully, you’re missing out. Looking up close as they gently curl and uncoil their tapered mouths toward food, you sense that they’re not just eating, but enjoying. Watch a bit more, and the hesitant flicks and sags of their antennae seem to convey some kind of emotion. Maybe annoyance? Or something like agitation?
Whether bees really experience any of these things is an open scientific question. It’s also an important one with implications for how we should treat not just bees, but the great majority of animals. Recently, studies by Geraldine Wright and her colleagues at Newcastle University in the UK have rekindled debate over these issues by showing that honeybees may experience something akin to moods.
Using simple behavioral tests, Wright’s research team showed that like other lab-tested brooders -- which so far include us, monkeys, dogs, and starlings -- stressed bees tend to see the glass as half empty. While this doesn’t (and can’t) prove that bees experience human-like emotions, it does give pause. We should take seriously the possibility that it feels like something to be an insect.
As invertebrates -- animals without backbones -- bees are representatives of a diverse group accounting for over 95 percent of animal species. But despite their prevalence, not to mention their varied and often nuanced behaviors, invertebrates are sometimes regarded as life’s second string, as a mindless and unfeeling band of alien critters. If that seems a bit melodramatic, just consider our willingness to boil some of them alive.
While there’s a good deal known about invertebrate neurobiology, these facts alone haven’t settled questions of their sentience. On the one hand, invertebrates lack a cortex, amygdala, as well as many of the other major brain structures routinely implicated in human emotion. And unsurprisingly, their nervous systems are quite minimalist compared to ours: we have roughly a hundred thousand bee brains worth of neurons in our heads. On the other hand, some invertebrates, including insects, do posses the rudiments of our stress response system. So the question is still on the table: do they experience emotion in a way that we would recognize, or just react to the world with a set of glorified reflexes?
To get a foothold on this fascinating question, Wright’s team, which was headed by Melissa Bateson, followed the lead of recent investigations on “pessimistic biases” in animals. In humans, this refers to the well known tendency to perceive threat or anticipate negative outcomes when anxious or depressed. For example, in tests where people are shown ambiguous sentences like “The doctor examined little Emily’s growth,” the anxious are less likely than others to conclude that Emily is fine, and that only her height was being checked.
Although it’s probably not surprising that bad moods and negative judgments go together, their correlation is useful. Casually, we rely on it to make informed guesses about how people are feeling from observing their actions and choices. Scientifically, we can use it to study the emotions of creatures who can’t directly tell us how they feel. The key here is to set up a controlled situation where animals encounter an ambiguous stimulus (a nonverbal version of the Emily sentence).
In the initial setup of Wright’s experiment, a group of bees was trained to associate two simple odor mixtures with two different foods. One mixture, which consisted of 1 part of hexanol to 9 parts of octanone, was repeatedly paired with sucrose, which bees find rewarding. The other odor mixture consisted of the same two chemicals in opposite proportions (9 parts hexanol to 1 part octanone), and was paired with quinine, a compound most of us find bitter, and that bees will actively avoid after tasting. After learning these odor-food associations, the bees responded as expected, uncoiling and extending their mouthparts in anticipation of food when the first odor mixture was presented, and retracting them at offers of the second mixture.
After this training, the scientists could test the bees’ mouthing responses to a series of ambiguous, intermediate odor mixtures to study perceptual judgments. But first, half of the bees got a trip to the vortexer.
It was probably as unpleasant for them as it sounds. In a procedure meant to simulate a badger attack on a hive, the bees were shaken for one minute in a benchtop machine used to vigorously mix chemicals. If anything would put bees in bad mood, this would be it.
Next, both shaken and unshaken bees were tested on five mixtures of hexanol and octanone at different concentrations. Unsurprisingly, both groups were more likely to advance their mouths to octanol heavy mixtures (which predicted sugar) than hexanol heavy mixtures (which predicted quinine). Interestingly though, the shaken bees were more reluctant to advance toward the mixtures than their unshaken counterparts. In an analogue of the classic half-empty vs. half-full scenario, in which an equal mixture of hexanol and octanone was presented, control bees gave the concoction the benefit of the doubt. They advanced their mouths in anticipation of food on more than half of trials. Shaken bees, on the other hand, were far more likely to recoil. The stress of shaking had turned them into pessimists who interpreted the ambiguous odor as half-threatening, rather than half-appetizing.
In addition to these behavioral measures, the scientists also tested for changes in bees’ systemic neurotransmitter levels after shaking. Transmitters with known roles in insect learning (octopamine), aversive conditioning (dopamine), and aggression (serotonin) were all reduced by the procedure.
Together, these behavioral and neurochemical tests reveal an unexpected dimension of bee cognition. Scientifically, we can say that bees have a persistent state of negative affect that is triggered by agitation, associated with system-wide changes in neurotransmitters and causes clear, measurable cognitive biases.
Can we draw a deeper conclusion than this? For now, no. Short of asking the bees how they’re feeling, or probing their minds with a yet un-built emotion-meter, we simply can’t know what being a bee feels like. However, Wright and her co-authors leave us with an intriguing plea for consistency, one that nudges us to think clearly on how we regard the minds and emotions of all creatures.
In other contexts, they imply, we’re instinctively willing to call a dog or a person anxious when we see behavioral evidence of pessimism. We see a “timid” but “personable” dog experience what is “quite likely” separation anxiety, test it for pessimistic biases, and upon finding these (as was done last year), conclude that dogs indeed feel anxious when left alone. “It is logically inconsistent,” Bateson and colleagues say, to conclude this “but to deny the same conclusion in the case of honeybees.”
Indeed it is. So you need to decide whether bees get a trial membership among the genuinely anxious, or if your dog’s pessimism implies nothing about its feelings. Probably not a tough choice for a dog owner.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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22 Comments
Add CommentEven bacteria have been found to emote and have a sense of identity. Its no surprise that insects do too!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll living creature are emotional.Without emotion how can any creature survive in the world?.Western civilization unnecessary given importance to thinking faculty and ridicule emotion as a sentimentally womanly nonsense.I had seen many times when cow`s child die cow also weep, as other animal`s brain not developed just like man so the expression of their emotion is rudimentary.We must respect to emotion of all other creature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat insects respond to stressful conditions is likely more a survival adaptation than an indication of internal sentiments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat dogs interact intimately with human's emotional responses is most likely a matter of unnatural human selection in the breeding of dogs. Don't try to get emotional with a coyote!
If I recall, it's common for people to project their own emotional state onto other beings, including people!
The experiments are simple learning experiments described in a mentalistic language. Any learning experiment can be described by referring to hypothetical emotions. You could esily program a computer to learn like that. Of cours a bee is not a machine but capacity to differenciate between chemical stimuli and learn does not say anything about emotions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKirka I think you have an interesting point, but I'm not sure it quite fits fully with the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe experiment in question does something that is outwith the relationship between the bee and the food. It specifically shakes them, what precisely could the bee said to be learning?
As for myself, I would have two concerns, firstly I think the article should have mentioned if the posibility of disorientation as a cause where the signals received were, in effect, messed up. I.E confused.
The second is whether or not the decisions were long lived, once put in the shaker it could have unforeseen biological damage. Only if you could see consistent changes of behaviour that can go either way could you really begin to start making conclusions about the nature or whats going on. Either way this would require patience and a brilliantly designed experiment. Possibly longitudinal observation would be better, but the decisions may be weaker than in a series of specific experiments.
The mentalistic language bit you mention...it seems a bit trivial to me. If you replace the words 'emotion' with something else you still end up with the need to make a decision about whether or not behaviours in humans (A,B,C which lead to conclusion X) is the same as the behaviours that a bee demonstrates that 'seem' like analogues of A,B and C, and whether or not the differences and similarities warrant the conclusion that Bee -A, B and C lead to X.
I would imagine that the more approximate A, B and C can be will intuitively strengthen the case for saying X.
But regardless of the strength of the logic, the article (unusually) states the case in clear firm language about the limitations and that to exceed those conclusions leads you into a matter of opinion.
Not sure what else you want in an article at this level.
The language in which the second experiment is described is not clear and firm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The shaken bees were more reluctant to advance toward the mixtures than their unshaken counterparts"
"The stress of shaking had turned them into pessimists who interpreted the ambiguous odor as half-threatening, rather than half-appetizing."
If you strip the description of all the emotions and ask what the bees observably did it is really simple: the stressed bees exhibited less of the previously learned behavior than the control group, there was a reduction in the frequency of the conditioned response. This can have any number of explanations other than offered: maybe stressed bees are generally less active, or exhibit less nutrition seeking behavior, shaking affects their memory. If they were shaken so hard that some of them would be dead there would also be less of the conditioned response.
The behavior of bees or any other animal obviously has a survival function and therefore we can resonate with it emotionally but that does not mean the animals experience the same emotion as we would.Even taxis in microrganisms or tropism in plants can be emphatized with.
What are emotions ? it is response to changing situations in environment.This is very important property for every critter including us to survive and produce progeny.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObviously bees have emotions there is no need to become neurologist .
But above experiment in Bees seems to be dubious because how one can know all bees from vortex are agitated and what is relation to feeling about smell.May be a bees full of stomach will not go near other food .
I think there are many plausible things in this article .
Have they checked level of chemical after agitation and how is it possible in case of bees to measure them ?
What are ways to convey emotions in case of bees ? it is antenna or just mouth movement this is also can not be proven .
TO understand bee's feeling one has to become a BEE.
I think an important aspect of human emotion has been overlooked in all discussions so far: human emotion represents an internalized, almost synethesiac, integrated state encompassing many internal and external conditions producing a means of very quickly changing responses to new conditions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that the rudimentary tests performed here reveal any such highly developed integrated state processing.
Personally, I'm not convinced that all humans have emotions. I am convinced that the vast majority of life forms engage in pro-survival activities on the personal and community/species level. Emotion is simply the label we choose to apply to these natural behaviors. The only difference is a matter of degree. Read up on plant memory and plant sentience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"All things are concious."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho said that?
I say "Almost...".
I remember one time watching dragonflies out in a parking lot. One in particular caught my eye at a distance of about 40 feet and I just watched him for a bit. Suddenly he zipped over, perhaps half a foot from the tip of my nose, facing me and just hovered there for several seconds. Then he flew away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnimals, including insects, would appear to be aware of when you are watching them, assuming they have the eyes for it. Normally if you look at a fly or bee that is close to you that is more than enough to cause them to fly away. They perceive the attentive giant to be more threatening.
It makes sense that this would be something that they would experience at an emotional level. There is no physical contact that would cause them pain and they need to be able to react quickly to a threat rather than "thinking things through."
But what of the dragonfly? It was late afternoon. And one thing that I noticed about the dragonflies was that some were flexing their bodies, almost folding themselves in half. This is male behavior related to mating.
What seems likely to me, at least, is that given the timing the dragonfly was more aggressive than he would have otherwise been, and in relation to a perceived threat his reaction was aggressive, trying to be threatening to what he perceived as threatening. He was choosing fight over flight. Presumably because of the dragonfly equivalent of testosterone coursing through his veins.
Is it really that odd that they should have a psychology that is similar to our own, albeit more primitive? A predator or scavenger has to be curious, looking for the prey that is hiding or the food that is out of sight.
Animals that are in the process of learning skills that they will use as adults appear to experience it as a form of play. It would make sense that an animal making use of its powers (such as flight) would, all things being equal, experience enjoyment at doing it well.
The emotions that we experience have survival value. Even anxiety, which so often gets in the way of learning, has value at least in relation to a physical threat, forcing us to shift our attention away from what is distant to what is immediate, narrowing our focus on that which is perceived as threatening. In terms of fundamentals the predator and scavenger face a world much like our own.
Rather than experiencing this as threatening, I find it comforting, as it means that the world makes sense.
Animal and insect emotions are more of a neuronal reflex based on sensorimotor coupling of the organism with the environment and perhaps guided by the orientation towards survival fitness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut the subjective cognitive context of human beings with the hard problem related to feelings and quality of experience is not easily explained based on the neuronal network activity and its simple reflex.
Rather than neural correlates of consciousness ,now neuronal synchronies based on synchronisation of oscillatory phases in specific and specialised mosaic ofneural parts and components in multiple brain locations and regions have been implicated,based on neurophenomenological studies,to explain cognitive phenomenality.
That calls for large scale integration processes in brain and cooperative and coherent mechanisms leading to self organised behaviour and its neurodynamical pole of integration.Evidently this pole underlies the flow and emergence of cognitive phenomenality and its subjective cognitive context.
This is probably embeded in the somatic context of the organism and its cognitive body through the glial cells and the astocytic calcium signaling which integrates the neural activities,besides guiding and directing neuronal activity,and its growth and structure and being involved in regulatory functions of neuromodulation.These minding mechanisms are rooted in the physiology of the organism and its life processes. A core sense of self and subjectivity of awareness is related to the body regulation and its cellular activities.The astroglial network provides such a physiological syncytium for the somatic context and cognitive body of the self.
This is probably not the case in insects and even animals,since a sense of self calls for advanced cogniton capabilites which are located in the frontal lobes,and these are associated with the ancient structures in the brain in the hippocampal regions linked to limbic system and its seats of emotion,memeory and learning. The communication between the ancient and modern structures are what synchronisation of neuronal and astro-glial networks facilitate.
That is not evidently the case in insects
Such cooperative and bi-directional communication integrates the subjective domain of feelings with the physical domain of brain body and behaviour
The affective behaviour of insects and animals is limited to the simple reflex and can be explained by information processing,and not self- consciousness and its subjectivity of feelings
Prof Sureshkumar.S,Chief Scientist and Adviser,CSIR-NIIST,TRIVANDRUM,INDIA
I think our emotional experiences are separate from the conscious, deliberate determinations of our actions because it the seem to be somewhat outside the influence and control of our rational processes. We may immediately respond to something very sad, such as the death of a loved one, by crying - without any deliberate intention of doing so. Likewise, some may react with jealous rage almost as the product of a series of chemical reactions rather than any rationally determined behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese may be the processes that determine all 'instinctive' behavior of animals and other creatures, while is is only the conscious awareness of such processes and the more deliberately determined reasoning of humans and perhaps, to a much lesser extent, other more highly functioning animals that allow us to be aware that those 'emotional' processes exist at all.
The initial step, where both sets of bees began to prefer octanone because they associated it with sucrose, was learned. However, the fact that bees refined their appetites after being shaken cannot be attributed to any conditioning within the experiment. If you shook a computer, that wouldn't lead it to refuse its vegetables.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe initial step, where both sets of bees began to prefer octanone because they associated it with sucrose, was learned. However, the fact that bees refined their appetites after being shaken cannot be attributed to any conditioning within the experiment. If you shook a computer, that wouldn't lead it to refuse its vegetables.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverything can have emotions, the question is whether the emotions are felt, and whether the creature knows who feels it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDefining an "emotion" as a stereotyped collection of bodily states would ensure that anything that has a body has emotions.
Does a bee's brain sense the body's states? Probably yes, therefore it feels its emotions. Does the brain create a model of the bee itself? Probably not, therefore the bee doesn't know who does the act of feeling.
The experiment is about whether a set of bodily states associates with a later behaviour. That's an interesting question, but it is not related to the question of whether the bee feels and knows that it feels.
Prof Sureshkumar.S wrote, "The affective behaviour of insects and animals is limited to the simple reflex and can be explained by information processing,and not self- consciousness and its subjectivity of feelings."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is where you lost me, Doctor. Animals would include chimps, squirrels, crows and squids. In fact, I would dare say that it includes ourselves. And no doubt all human behavior could in principle be explained in strictly physical terms without recourse to even a concept of consciousness. However, we also know that chimps, squirrels, crows and squid display considerable problem solving abilities.
Squirrels will test out different approaches when they are faced with a complicated obstacle course between them and a bird feeder. Crows will use tools to acquire tools that may then be used to attain an objective. Octopi will show some awareness of the fact that we are aware of them, such as when it waits until night to lift the lid, get out of its tank, get fish in another tank, then climb back into its own tank and replaces the lid.
Furthermore, all animals are partly hardwired but preserve some plasticity which makes them capable of learning, whether you wish to put quotation marks around the word "learning" or not. And personally, I see considerable cognitive abilities in a cat when I can see her puzzling out how to get from one place to another, or meowing and looking straight at me until I look back at her, then immediately looking at someone else's food bowl, not her own.
conscious,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisok.
may the spanish win in this perverted practice( = a good example.
What are "feelings" other than comparisons between reality and preferred conditions, usually accompanied by a motivation to change reality? Is it maybe reasonable to suggest that a thermostat has feelings? What makes life interesting is when one desire, and therefore one feeling, conflicts with another. The thermostat only has one desire at a time, which changes with temperature settings and whether it's in cooling or heating state. Where is the line to be drawn between its feelings and ours? Should we maybe try to avoid drawing so many lines and creating so many categories?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are humans so loathe to contemplate that other living things might have feelings? So far, all the other things ascribed to humans alone (language, tools, art...) have turned out to be present in other animals. Why would emotions be any different?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould it be that it is horrible to reflect upon how humans have treated other animals with the realization of the feelings, pain and suffering we have caused?
It is often stated, without conclusive evidence, that many creatures do not experience emotion. We experience emotion and pain ourselves, and don't see it expressed in other creatures. If an outsider were to look at humans and question the same thing, how would they know? What should be looked for?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know that certain creatures lack the same brain regions that we do, that we have determined to be our emotional and pain parts, and there is much assumption in concluding that this means they also lack emotion and the ability to feel pain.
As life can thrive in sulfur and other climes that we are not adapted to, why not then could other creatures have developed systems in their brains or other organs that allow them to experience emotions and pain? I think of the insects that 'breathe' through structures throughout the whole body, without having lungs- different means to a similar end. Perhaps the brain isn't the only structure that has the ability to establish emotion, pain, pleasure, or even conciousness.
octopodes
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