waggledancers

My Blog » Communication: Bees on cocaine

Back to Home Written on 05-Jan-2009 by griffter

beee1 An interesting way to start 2009. I am indebted to herdmeister Mark Earls for forwarding me to this article. In brief bees get a kick out of waggledancing - it makes them feel valuedby the community. So much so that if you give them illegal substances they carry on waggledancing even if they have no nectar to report. Why and how a research scientist decides that the frontiers of knowledge can be rolled forward by coking up bees I don't intend to speculate on. Nor what the effect on the honey might be!

But my thought for the day is the danger of signalling that we're onto something when we haven't got a solution yet. Its a reminder that the desire for recognition is strong - stronger than being truthful. Crazed for recognition we can do strange things. So worth doing an internal truth check - am I onto something or am I trying not to rock the boat?

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