Is there any scientific basis for some kind of shared collective thought I don’t know about? In other words, what’s the “hive mind” if not the collective result of individual minds?
Changes in behaviour in the individual level might result in an apparent cognitive decline for that individual, but could still benefit the hive as a whole.
Yes, it's the idea that the colony exhibits behaviour with a level of intelligence impossible for any of the single bees. Things like choosing the location of the nest or managing the temperature of the nest, there's various decisions "made" by the colony as a kind of emergent property of the behaviour of the individual bees who themselves don't have the capacity to think at that level. The various aspects of colony behaviour have all been individually studied by quite a few people and groups, yes.
Am I? I just mentioned there's research that shows a colony of bees can make decisions that individual bees are incapable of. What am I misunderstanding?
Crowds of people, as an average, are more accurate at guessing the number of beans in a jar at a county fair than individual people, but not because there's such a thing as cognition manifesting at the group level in any literal sense.
I think you're making an interesting point, but I think you're attempting to point to a hive mind like it's the only pertinent topic when it comes to cognition of bees, as if testing for cognitive capabilities of individuals was a misunderstanding. But it's not a misunderstanding, it's part of what I think is some pretty explosively important research testifying to insect, cognition and even consciousness. At least speaking for myself, if the research holds, for me it necessitates a mind-blowing reevaluation of the internal lives of at least some insects.
> you're attempting to point to a hive mind like it's the only pertinent topic when it comes to cognition of bees, as if testing for cognitive capabilities of individuals was a misunderstanding
I'm not at all. I only responded to the questions "is a hive mind a thing, had anyone even studied that?" which is a Yes, and "why would they study the hive mind, isn't studying the individual enough?" for which I gave one potential reason to do so. I never suggested that studying the individuals was insufficient or that I took any issue with the study as it was conducted, I only answered these questions.
> Crowds of people, as an average, are more accurate at guessing the number of beans in a jar at a county fair than individual people, but not because there's such a thing as cognition manifesting at the group level in any literal sense.
Sure but if someone asked you "is there any point in studying group dynamics when you could just study individuals" you could still give a good argument for it right?
If human society changed so that average individual intelligence decreased, but the human race as a whole acted more intelligently, did human intelligence increase or decrease?
The comparison only works if the concept of a “hive mind” is as accepted and defined as the concept of a brain, which is quite literally what I was asking.
"Hive mind" conjures ideas of an omnipresent, all-controlling intelligence to me like startrek's borg, but I think this is more about the idea of a "superorganism" [0] like some bees and most ants where the group exhibits traits and "behavior" and "decisions" as a whole, beyond the ability of any single, specialized individual. Less superintelligence and more emergent behavior and complexity.
Nitpick: the article mentions that the bees are tracked with QR Codes, but I find that hard to believe, given the space constraints. In one photo it looks like it is an ArUco marker.
> The protocol used at Fukushima is automated. Each bee is equipped with a 2-mm-wide QR Code which is read by a camera, activating the opening of the maze.
But yeah, doesn't look like a QR code at all, are there possibly different variations of QR codes? Haven't heard about that myself.
This is it. All matrix codes are now commonly referred to as “QR Codes”. I’ve noticed this especially at airports where both passengers and gate agents refer to the “QR codes” on boarding passes. (Which are IIRC Aztec codes)
Yes - even though it obviously has visual height the data only runs in one dimension. For the 2D codes like QR the data is in both directions, which is why orientation often comes up in their design.
We have something similar in Barcelona (maybe entire Spain? Apparently called NaviLens, colored squares rather than triangles) all around public transit points. They're used for blind people to navigate the public transit system :)
> As users sweep their environment with a smartphone, audio cues allow them to find and center the tag in the phone’s field of view. A shake of the wrist prompts the details contained within the tag to be read out (visually impaired people are often holding a guide dog or cane with their other hand). https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/135057/these-col...
>Although the results of the study have yet to be published, scientists are already reporting a decline in insect cognition in the contaminated area of Fukushima Prefecture.
Although the results of the study have yet to be published, scientists are already reporting a decline in insect cognition in the contaminated area of Fukushima Prefecture. "We can see correlations," Armant says. "However, a causal link with radioactive contamination has not yet been established. But since the area is no longer inhabited, it is unlikely that the effect is due to factors such as pesticides."
So, when people leave the area, insect cognition decline, therefore human presence improves cognition in insects.
Have we tried increasing cognition by selective breeding. Get mice best at maze to breed 100 descendants and repeat it few times, with varying food supply and survival difficulties.
This gets you mice that are better at navigating mazes. The connection between that and general cognition or learning capacity is not as robust as you would hope. Just as likely they simply have better peripheral vision or something.
I once fed one of those, with a raisin, hastily pulled out of my müsli, and put it on the tip of a long needle.
Did a nap at around 2 to 3PM on a sunny day, had the balcony door tilted inwards.
Got woken up by a strange, and rather loud buzzing sound, maybe like when you're holding a strip of paper, or soft plastic into a ventilator/fan.
Searched and saw nothing at first, until I saw movement behind the lowered window blinds.
Pulled them back and made that hornet bouncing against the glass, like panicked.
Put them back very slowly, raised the blinds of the balcony door and opened it wide.
Tried to shoo the hornet towards the now wide opened balcony door by slowly pulling the blinds back wide. Didn't work. It just bounced against the glass even more panicked.
Put the blinds back very slowly again.
I somehow got the idea that I maybe should give her something to eat.
But what? Honey on a spoon? Sugar dissolved in water? For whichever reason I decided to pick a raisin out of my müsli-box, and put that on the top of a long needle.
Don't ask me why. I never did that before, I just came to me. I can't explain how.
Anyway, I held the needle, maybe 10cm long, glinting silvery, very slowly and steady between the gap of blinds and windowframe, and the hornet crawled towards the tip on the inside of the blinds, tilted by 90°, like crawling on a wall.
And it began to gnaw on the raisin! I could see it shrink, took maybe 5 minutes until it was gone. Pulled the now empty needle back very slowly, and waited.
Hornet did something like 'aerobics', a strange dance, while still sitting rotated by 90° on the inside of the blinds, raising one of her legs at a time, grooming herself, and its wings. But rhythmically, several times.
For maybe two minutes.
Then, without bumping into anything, it flew out of the gap, and made two slow circles of maybe half a meter in diameter, maybe half a meter away from the tip of my nose, or my eyes, counterclockwise.
Absolutely coordinated. No variation in speed, and the circles like being drawn with a pair of compasses.
For maybe half a minute, max.
I stood very, very still.
And then it buzzed out very fast through the wide opened balcony door, in a straight line, out of sight.
I stood there, wondering, did that really happen? Am I still dreaming?
WTF?!
That was one of the stranger things happening in my life.
That's for honey-bees, though I've wondered about if Wasps, Bumblebees, or Hornets do similar things.
Anyway, there were no other Hornets in sight, and I got no other visits, or a nest.
Phew! Lucky me! :-)
Thinking about it, I remember sitting outside an Ice cream parlor with friends, having had a bowl of amarena cherry ice. A Wasp flew into it, and almost drowned in the molten residue at the bottom, and couldn't escape the steep and smooth glass walls. I slowly put a spoon into it, to give her a 'ladder'. That worked somehow, but not instantly.
She stayed on the spoon for while, also doing that selfgrooming thing, then lifted off rather uncoordinated, almost crashing into an ashtray, making miniature tornadoes there for a few seconds :-)
Then flying away finally. Also got no 'follow ups', for maybe 15 to 20 minutes, after which we left.
Maybe too exhausted to do that dance-thing, at home?
