Here?s something for all of us:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/02/bees-intelligence-minds-pollination
Interesting article. I'm sorry, but I can't begin to understand why this is so revolutionary. I would think it would be obvious that an animal that can learn is an animal that can feel, otherwise how else would it learn? And anyone who has been around bees and actually worked with them knows they don't only react instinctively, right? If I am working a hive and I squeeze a bee between two frames, she buzzes and struggles to be let out and then continues to be irritated for a few minutes, in spite of the fact that I haven't hurt her. It was obviously a negative experience for her, and an insect who can remember the way home after flying 3 miles away could easily remember other things.
There is a carpenter bee male who has set up his territory in front of our garage this year. The other day, since messing with male bees is fun because there are no consequences
, I snuck up on him and snagged him out of the air. I didn't hurt him, just held him in my hand for a few seconds, during which time he struggled and buzzed, and then I released him. He is now wary of me when I approach, and if I hold up my hand like I'm going to grab him again, he flies away. How else would he have learned if he didn't remember the negative experience of being caught, and especially that he DID remember it as negative, in spite of the fact that nothing bad actually happened? He obviously acted afraid, he experienced the threat that I might be a predator, and he is now responding to avoid feeling and experiencing that negative situation again. We would call that "feeling afraid". It wasn't instinctive, since he didn't try to avoid me the first time. I don't need any fancy scientific equipment to observe this. How else could this type of behavior be explained? I don't understand what the alternative to sentiency could be in an organism that is obviously so complex.
It reminds me of Robert Frost's "A Considerable Speck".
A Considerable Speck
(Microscopic)
A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think,
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt?
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn?t want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.
I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.