Friday, March 03, 2017

The Bee Brain is not a Pea Brain

Thomas Riggins

Insects have memory and they can learn. They may have consciousness and self awareness i.e., they may be little persons in their own right. The moral implications of this may be worrisome but only if morals are important. If our species is any indication that does not seem to be the case. We will continue to kill and slaughter other life forms as merrily as we do each other: hunting (it's fun to kill), for food (we have a taste for blood), war ( we want other people's stuff ), murder (no respect or some genetic flaw), causing famines, extinctions and climate change (profits before people and the environment). On top of all this is an irrational rejection based on ignorance and greed of the only possible moral system that could be constructed in the real world that might end all this; humanistic socialism based on Marxism-Leninism and this has the inevitable drawback of having to use many of the very methods it wants to extirpate in order to eventuate.
Scientists trained bumblebees to move a ball to the center of a platform to gain a sugary treat.
NYTIMES.COM
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