Although bees can’t be expected to push levers, they can be trained to take either the left or the right exit inside a cylinder modified for the DMTS test. A color disk serves as a cue at the entrance of the maze, so that the bee sees it before entering. Once within the maze, the bee has to choose the arm displaying the color that matches (DMTS) or differs from (DNMTS) the color at the entrance. Bees perform both tasks well. They even generalize to a situation they have never previously encountered. That is, once they’ve been trained with colors, they “get it” and can now follow a trail of vertical stripes if a disk with vertical gratings is left at the entrance of the maze. These experiments tell us that bees have learned an abstract relation (sameness in DMTS, difference in DNMTS) irrespective of the physical nature of the stimuli. The generalization to novel stimuli can even occur from odors to colors.
Insect Intelligence
Although these experiments do not tell us that bees are conscious, they caution us that we have no principled reason at this point to reject this assertion. Bees are highly adaptive and sophisticated creatures with a bit fewer than one million neurons, which are interconnected in ways that are beyond our current understanding, jammed into less than one cubic millimeter of brain tissue. The neural density in the bee’s brain is about 10 times higher than that in a mammalian cerebral cortex, which most of us take to be the pinnacle of evolution on this planet. In humans, widespread loss of cerebral cortex, as in the vegetative patient Terri Schiavo, leads to an irreversible loss of consciousness. That is not to say that a cerebral cortex is necessary for consciousness in creatures with a different evolutionary heritage.
Bees live in highly stratified yet flexible social organizations with group decision-making skills that rival academic, corporate or government committees in efficiency. In spring, when bees swarm, they choose a new hive that needs to satisfy many demands within a couple of days (consider that the next time you go house hunting). They communicate information about the location and quality of food sources using the waggle dance. Bees can fly several kilometers and return to their hive, a remarkable navigational performance. Their brains seem to have incorporated a map of their environment. And a scent blown into the hive can trigger a return to the site where the bee previously encountered this odor. This type of associative memory was famously described by French novelist Marcel Proust in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Given all of this ability, why does almost everybody instinctively reject the idea that bees or other insects might be conscious? The trouble is that bees are so different from us and our ilk that our insights fail us. But just because they are small and live in colonies does not mean that they can’t have subjective states, that they can’t smell the fragrance of the golden nectar or experience the warm rays of the sun or maybe even have a primitive sense of self. I am not a mystic. I am not arguing for pan-psychism, for the notion that anything is conscious. Nor am I assuming that bees can reason or can reflect on their fate as animated cartoon bees.
What this dilemma highlights is that there is no accepted theory of consciousness, no principled theory that would tell us which systems, organic or artificial, are conscious and why. In the absence of such a theory, we must at the very least remain agnostic about consciousness in these creatures. So the next time a bee hovers above your breakfast toast, attracted by the sweet jam, gently shoo her away. For she might be a fellow sentient being, experiencing her brief interlude in the light, shoehorned between this moment and eternity.
Note: This article was originally published with the title, "What Is It Like To Be a Bee?".
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20 Comments
Add CommentLovely writing by a seemingly sensible and sensitive thinker.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd, BTW, the kind of agnosticism mentioned in this article is one that I [someone who wouldn't mind leaving rationally enraged philosophical "tyre marks" behind - even if only very few folk can will ever be able to follow where I was coming from and what I was getting at] can approve of.
Who has any scientific proof that queen bees really fly ever higher to select the strongest male? Personally I have seen males land on swarms on branches and disappear into the throng. You would need pretty good eyesight to follow the queen's maiden flight. I usually lose track of foraging bees after thirty feet or so!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBees in hives behave collectively. If bees have individual awareness, then in what form is their collective conciousness, as the support is distributed. Human sensory input is distributed, as is our global awareness, even though we perceive it to be unique. In studying hive conciousness, we may find keys to understanding how our brains form complex images...and on what media they are founded.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We take the magical gift of consciousness for granted. From the time I awaken until I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, I am flooded with conscious sensations. And contrary to assertions made by philosophers, novelists and other literati, by and large this stream of consciousness does not relate to quiet self-reflection and introspective thoughts. No, most of it is filled with raw sensations"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow is consiousness defined ? Does it include "raw" sensations or only introspection ?
Consciousness is a somewhat relative term in psychology right now. Psychologists and neuroscientists really can't determine what an animal or human subject experiences, rather just their respected behavior(s). You can observe a bee remember something but you don't know what is going on inside it's head.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOH! I know some people I wish were conscious!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose interested to explore the nature of consciousness may like to click:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://rewiringthebrain.net/
http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=39251
Karz
As Thomas Nagel would describe consciousness: "There is something that it is like to be that conscious creature." In response to the question concerning whether thoughts or impressions were involved in consciousness, consciousness concerns the subjective experience of impressions and the universally subjective experience of reasoning and thought; so, the answer can be both.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChristof Koch... I am suggesting that you have a death wish syndrome that you should be aware of. If we are menaced as children, what we do as an adult is to set the danger up to prove to ourselves that we can conquer our fear of death. We will do it over and over again. Until one day... "SPLAT." One person in particular stands out as an example of this: Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. I know this pattern very well because I suffered from it myself. Even with our intelligence, we are still Pavlovian creatures who are run by our prior programming. Fortunately, I broke the program code. I no longer put myself at risk needlessly. I hope this may help you to understand what your motivation is all about in terms of putting your life at risk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can only understand consciousness from a human perspective and that is conditioned by our culture. What it would mean for a bee to have consciousness we can't have any idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis a well-written but completely uninformative article. our inability to fully articulate the finest intricacies of consciousness is truly a fundamental one, but it is in no way true that we are in the dark about it. current philosophy of mind has space for different kinds of animal consciousness and bees certainly have fit this bill for generations of philosophers. I expected a little more from a scientific journal. leave the interpretation to philosophers, just give us the results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMichael Feygin
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that consciousness is the nature's way to assure the intactness of our patterns of thought as well as our physical bodies while we go through life. By analogy, this is what happens when a computer is turned on. It first needs to assess its various physical and software resources and assess that they are in a working order and intact from the previous interruption. Then, the operating system makes sure that none of these vital resources is disrupted during the computer's operation. I believe that this is the principal task of consciousness. That is why we are so afraid of losing it even temporarily. By reassuring the continuity of our physical and mental patterns we reassure the continuation of our existence. I believe that animals must do the same. This is the nature's way of preserving organisms during their lifetime.
I can only assume that the author is the same individual who collaborated with the late Sir Francis Crick in determining aspects of the primarily visually located neural correlates of consciousness... or what Dr. Crick termed the "astonishing hypothesis": that our conscious "minds" are ultimately fully instantiated by our (remarkably evolved) physical brains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a physician and scientific naturalist, seeing a universe and all that has evolved totally irrelevant to religious superstition, I have often admired the worked on scientists who simply observe the connections we have to the world about us, whether it be bees or bonobos.
Further, like ants (read E.O. Wilson if you want to have your proverbial eyes opened) and bees, we humans are clearly "hive" creatures... our "individualism" (and "free will") being essentially illusory.
From the perspective of medicine and philosophy, the human mind/consciousness is the last great frontier, and like genetics and genomics, the steady advances in neuroscience will finally pull the curtain back in the Land Of OZ: there is no magical wizard... no bizarre ethereal "soul"... no "ghost" in the machine... but indeed a remarkable edifice of evolution: NATURE, to be marveled upon and revered.
THE abstractions processed by these "trained" bees suprise me... ... ... not at all. There is nothing unique about human behaviors and analogies to be found among many of our fellow animal travelers... on this small blue dot, in the vastness of space.
Cheers!
Without a doubt, if you enjoyed this article you should read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. It's a fascinating exploration into the possible original bicameral mind and how its demise led to the introduction of consciousness. It also pairs incredibly well with The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. Read young ones, read!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Dick (Kline)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"..Fortunately, I broke the program code. I no longer put myself at risk needlessly. I hope this may help you to understand what your motivation is all about in terms of putting your life at risk..."
I am not sure if you are CONSIOUSLY deciding that breaking the "Program Code" makes you immortal. Just as we don't understand consciousness, we don't understand when our time will be up, and we are gone from this world. There are a million ways for a primate to cease living, one can avoid one way ("by breaking the code"), but we don't control rest of the natural ways to cease being a living thing. Please be conscious, don't let the Zombies take over !
Maybe the Bee is a Philosophical zombie (p-zombie = a bee-zombie!). It is informationally aware but there is, nothing that it is like, to be a bee.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit s edifice :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisit s edifice :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany religions (you know those delusions people have to cope with their fear of death and overly developed sense of self-importance) put man at the top of the pyramid and as a "guardian" of creation, based on his supposed superiorities and exclusive right to mental processing. For ease's sake animals are seen and treated as almost inanimate objects by a majority of people, atheists too. Man will gradually come down from his imaginary throne and show some more respect for its fellow creatures, whose lives and habitat we are casually and carelessly destroying, partly justified by this stubborn assumption that only we can feel and think.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee www.bodytalksystem.com an amazing healing modality that has integrated consciousness into the modality with amazing results. Our world is perceived through our 5 senses and subtle senses.Does anyone know the natural consciousness of the bee is ?Flies natural consciousness is the carriers of the soul/ death to the other side.
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