Growing up on a farm taught me that animals are absolutely able to think and learn. Not in the same way as humans, but I'm fully convinced there are degrees of consciousness.
Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
I love bees and ants, but I love bees the most. I would recommend people to study the behavior of bees and ants. Additionally, honey, propolis, etc. are super healthy, and we can thank bees for that.
I promise this isn’t a trap, it’s just my curiosity as a “flexitarian”. What (mostly) keeps me from eating animals is my mind wandering sometimes when making a protein choice about how they ended up there, wherever I am, not by choice.
When I think of insects, I see them as tiny microcontrollers. In my head bees have a little shift register to measure time.
While ants have control over each limb, they mostly move by rotating two tripods one at a time. It's like they turn on an output for three legs, turn off the output, and then turn on the output for the other three legs.
Ants can walk backward, though, so perhaps it is more like a half-bridge rectifier with multiple channels.
I’m curious if this experiment actually tests for time perception at all or if it’s a very different effect that we attribute as being actual experience of time.
I was unable to find the paper. I'm still wondering, if it is a cross-over experiment, as:
> The circles were in different positions at each room in the maze, but the bees still learned over varying amounts of time to fly toward the short flash of light associated with the sweet food.
Do not state, if the light suddenly changed in the rooms. If not, other factors might come into place.
To clarify, the CNN article asserts that this is the "first [discovered] evidence" that bees possess this capability, not that bees are the first insect to have ever developed this capacity, as the headline may suggest.
Yes, it means it’s the first insects we know of with this ability. It of course has no bearing on whether other insects can and we simply don’t know yet.
this is such an amazing discovery, with hundreds of thousands of insect species left to determine there time processing abilities, which of course could never be atributed to the basic ability to navigate, it is the work for so many indispensible scientific institutions to take on this essential groundbreaking work
We are learning so many wonderful things about Bees!
They can count https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003146
Growing up on a farm taught me that animals are absolutely able to think and learn. Not in the same way as humans, but I'm fully convinced there are degrees of consciousness.
Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
Thanks for this memory. I had similar experience watching spring lambs and swore off mutton/lamb/etc same day.
I love bees and ants, but I love bees the most. I would recommend people to study the behavior of bees and ants. Additionally, honey, propolis, etc. are super healthy, and we can thank bees for that.
Not that I want to curb your enthusiasm for bees, but…
I recently read that honey bees in particular get the most attention from humans lately, so they are kept in high numbers.
This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.
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I promise this isn’t a trap, it’s just my curiosity as a “flexitarian”. What (mostly) keeps me from eating animals is my mind wandering sometimes when making a protein choice about how they ended up there, wherever I am, not by choice.
Are you vegan?
Goats are just as tasty if you raised them, IMO. Maybe even tastier.
What is your definition of “conscious” here? Like it has thoughts and feelings?
Consciousness is a spectrum.
Even if that were true, how could you possibly know it?
... with insects on the low side, humans are mid, and dogs are top
When I think of insects, I see them as tiny microcontrollers. In my head bees have a little shift register to measure time.
While ants have control over each limb, they mostly move by rotating two tripods one at a time. It's like they turn on an output for three legs, turn off the output, and then turn on the output for the other three legs.
Ants can walk backward, though, so perhaps it is more like a half-bridge rectifier with multiple channels.
They're like little organic ICs.
It’s interesting that Hellen Keller describes her experience, before language acquisition as timeless, no perception of time at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814
I’m curious if this experiment actually tests for time perception at all or if it’s a very different effect that we attribute as being actual experience of time.
Different scientist and different set of experiments, but a much more fun and educational video of bees + time:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xlGuBT5GT10
I was unable to find the paper. I'm still wondering, if it is a cross-over experiment, as:
> The circles were in different positions at each room in the maze, but the bees still learned over varying amounts of time to fly toward the short flash of light associated with the sweet food.
Do not state, if the light suddenly changed in the rooms. If not, other factors might come into place.
Here is what would appear to be the paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41218757/
To clarify, the CNN article asserts that this is the "first [discovered] evidence" that bees possess this capability, not that bees are the first insect to have ever developed this capacity, as the headline may suggest.
> Scientists now know that bees can process time, a first in insects
We have no idea what other insects can do this or when they got the ability. Sounds more like a first in Scientists. (tongue somewhat in cheek)
Yes, it means it’s the first insects we know of with this ability. It of course has no bearing on whether other insects can and we simply don’t know yet.
Bees, buh.
We’ve known about the early bird since Ben Franklin’s day.
this is such an amazing discovery, with hundreds of thousands of insect species left to determine there time processing abilities, which of course could never be atributed to the basic ability to navigate, it is the work for so many indispensible scientific institutions to take on this essential groundbreaking work
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