My e-mail address is jkodea@dynamite.com.au
This site mainly concentrates on ideas about human and
animal biology and behaviour (ethology).
I have other Geocities sites in the literature and public
policy areas. Links below.
I have also included a link below to a web site that mentions
this page: Phil Goetz' site at SUNY, Buffalo, New York.
There is also a link to an article that makes some vague
references to human ethology; and mentions me for some
reason: "Sex, Status and President Clinton".
An "all-singing", "all-dancing" web page on bees,
which mentions my ideas below on why honey bees really
"dance", is the fUSION Anomaly. Bees page linked below.
I also have two on-line papers at Carl Bergstrom's animal
signalling pages - link below.
I have published on paper as well. Here is a list of my
articles relevant to the theme of this site and their basic
theories:
(1987) " On the origin of symbiotic bacterial luminescence
in fish. " Australian Society for Fish Biology Newsletter 17, 56.
[Argues that the metabolism of luminous bacteria is primarily
directed, not at emitting light, but at absorbing light to
capture energy. Light production is only a side-effect.]
(1990) " The mammalian rete mirabile and oxygen
availability. " Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology 95A,
23-25.
[Proposes that the counter-current heat exchangers in the
limbs of diving, burrowing and clinging mammals; which cool
the limbs; function to protect limb tissues from damage
when the limb circulation is cut off. An example is the
limbs of the tree sloth, which are kept cool, presumably to
protect the tissues when the muscles are contracting for
prolonged periods of clinging.]
(1991) " An additional or alternative function for the
'cryptic' rocking behaviour of praying mantises and stick
insects " (In German with an English abstract)
Entomologische Zeitschrift 101, 25-27.
[Proposes that the familiar rocking movements in insects like
praying mantises aid in vision, and are not for camouflage
as is often assumed.]
(1993) "Possible contribution of low ultraviolet light under
the rainforest canopy to the small stature of Pygmies and
Negritos", Homo (Germany) 44 (3), 284-287.
[Proposes that Pygmies have small, slow-growing skeletons
to prevent rickets due to vitamin D shortage in the low
sunlight environment of the rainforest.]
(1996) “ A note on the ultraviolet light levels in tropical
rainforest (North Queensland). ”, Australasian Society for
Human Biology Newsletter 8 (1), 10.
[Reports that the ultraviolet component of sunlight is almost
absent in the rainforest, due to the tree canopy.]
[With Bartholomew, R.] (1998) “ Religious devoutness
construed as pathology: The myth of ‘religious mania’ ”,
International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 8 (1), 1-16.
[Argues that so-called extremes of religious behaviour,
including "cult" activities, are found in mentally normal people.]
This site has had . visits
The following paper has not been published elsewhere.
DO HONEYBEES REALLY HAVE A "LANGUAGE"?
The honeybee "waggle dance" has generally been
considered to be communicative behaviour, since
Professor von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for this interpretation.
However there have been persistent doubts that the
dances really communicate locational information
(Wenner and Wells, 1990; Wenner et al. 1991;
Aldhous, 1996), and the "language" theory is not
universally accepted. All supposed proofs, including the
"robot bee" experiments, reported in National Geographic,
have been criticised, often on statistical grounds.
Below is a reinterpretation, and an evolutionary scenario
that does not require that the bee dances are a "language".
Some animals perform "idiothetic movements" that reflect in
miniature their prior large-scale movements (Schone, 1984).
An example is the Automeris moth which performs movements
after flight that contain information on the length of its
previous flight (Blest, 1960). Some social stingless bees
also "dance" after foraging: but the information on the
bee's latest flight, contained in the dance, is not used by
the other stingless bees, although the dances do "excite
recruits to go out and search" (Gould and Gould, 1988).
Africanised honeybees are known to dance in a way that
includes information, but this does not recruit other bees.
Foraging is an individual activity in this subspecies
(On-line paper by Elizabeth L Sears at:
http://www.insect-world.com/main/six.html).
Odours picked up by foraging bees and conveyed to
hivemates are known to play a role in encouraging group
foraging.
EVOLUTIONARY SCENARIO
1. Primitive bees, like some other insects, performed
movements after flight, known as "idiothetic" movements.
These probably helped them memorise locations they had
been to.
2. Bees evolved group foraging, and they relied on odours
picked up from successful foragers, which told them where
the best resources were.
3. Idiothetic movements attracted other bees to pick up
odours from the successful foragers making the idiothetic
movements ("dances").
4. The "dances" became more important in most modern
bees in conveying odour information to other bees to help
them forage successfully; and less important as idiothetic
behaviour.
5. The dances began as idiothetic behaviour, probably
to help the bee memorise the location of good resources,
and they are now important as well in conveying odour
information. But they have never acted, and still do not
act, as a "language" conveying distance and direction
information to hivemates. Odour information is sufficient.
Von Frisch was wrong.
REFERENCES
ALDHOUS, P. (1996). Larvae give dancing bees bad
vibes. New Sci. 25 May 1996, p. 17.
BLEST, AD (1960) The evolution, ontogeny and
quantitative control of the settling movements of some new
world saturniid moths, with some comments on distance
communication by honeybees. Behaviour 16, 188-253.
GOULD, JL and GOULD, CG (1988) The Honey Bee.
Scientific American Library, New York.
SCHONE, H (1984) Spatial Orientation: The Spatial Control of
Behavior in Animals and Man. Princeton University Press.
WENNER, A.M., MEADE, D.E. & FRIESEN, L.J. (1991).
Recruitment, search behavior, and flight ranges of honey
bees. Amer. Zool. 31 768-782.
WENNER, A.M. & WELLS, P.H. (1990). Anatomy of a Controversy:
The Question of a "Language" Among Bees. Columbia Univ.
Press, New York.
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Links to other sites on the Web
Phil Goetz's site
"Sex, Status and President Clinton"
"fUSION Anomaly. Bees"
My Geocities site on public policy
Carl Bergstrom's animal signalling pages
My literature site in Geocities
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