Continuing to be told that my statement that insects demonstrate intelligence is stupid, not wanting to waste any more time on answering that stupid statement by the stupid blog-rat at a would-be "brain trust", here is a fairly recent report on science in that area. Note the unintended punchline at the end of it, the ass is the one who hates my posts on Darwinism.
Communication is the key to forming complex societies. It’s what allows the honeybee to perform such extraordinary behaviors. And, naturally, language is a key factor in human success. Intelligence is required for both these things, so does this mean honeybees, with a minuscule brain, are intelligent? It’s a tricky quality to define. One attempt, from the American Psychological Association Task Force on Intelligence, defines it as the ability “to adapt efficiently to the environment and to learn from experience.” Bees are able to do this.
There are six different kinds of dance, for example, and bees are able to learn and change their behavior accordingly. If bees encounter a dead bee at a flower, they change the pattern of dancing they perform back at the hive, suggesting they can perform a risk/benefit analysis.
Both bee and human language are a consequence of intelligence, and research such as Ai’s forces us to rethink what we mean by intelligence. “There might be a common brain mechanism between humans and honeybees,” he says.
What it certainly shows is that you don’t need a big brain to be smart. As with many things, Charles Darwin realized this, writing in 1871: “The brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man.”
Update: That quote is one I read when I read his book that I've cited most often and critically, The Descent of Man, from where it's taken. I will admit that I had forgotten it until I read the article from the Japan Times, but I recognized it when I read it. Looking it up, Chuck, as always, was talking out of both sides of his mouth, he said, more fully:
As the various mental faculties gradually developed themselves the brain would almost certainly become larger. No one, I presume, doubts that the large proportion which the size of man's brain bears to his body, compared to the same proportion in the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers. We meet with closely analogous facts with insects, for in ants the cerebral ganglia are of extraordinary dimensions, and in all the Hymenoptera these ganglia are many times larger than in the less intelligent orders, such as beetles. (78. Dujardin, 'Annales des Sciences Nat.' 3rd series, Zoolog., tom. xiv. 1850, p. 203. See also Mr. Lowne, 'Anatomy and Phys. of the Musca vomitoria,' 1870, p. 14. My son, Mr. F. Darwin, dissected for me the cerebral ganglia of the Formica rufa.) On the other hand, no one supposes that the intellect of any two animals or of any two men can be accurately gauged by the cubic contents of their skulls. It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter: thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are notorious, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin's head. Under this point of view, the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of a man.
Right before he started in on a long paragraph of racist, 19th century style anthropology to rank humans as mentally superior and inferior based on race and some extremely convenient and rather obviously racist measurement. Which ties him absolutely with German Darwinism which fed existing streams of romantic era racism which fed directly into the minds of those who produced Nazism.
No comments:
Post a Comment