The Nerds and the Bees

That beautiful secret language through which bees and flowers conspire is unknown to both of them.

 

Bees have an incredibly high ‘flicker threshold’ compared to humans. If you and I were flying over a field of flowers, we’d see them mostly as a blur of color. But bees find it easier to see moving objects than stationary objects, and are able to distinguish individual flowers from the mess of color flying past them.

In addition to their giant, compound eyes, honeybees have a set of three-eyes on top of their heads arranged in a close triad like the main jewels of an insect tiara, called ‘ocelli’. Compared to the bee’s characteristically large pair of compound eyes, this set of little eyes is rudimentary, but the ocelli are also sensitive to ultra-violet and polarized light and each has not one but two visual fields. That is, these eyes are capable of looking at two different aspects of the world. One field is aimed at the horizon and sees focused light, while the other is sensitive to polarized light and can detect patterns in the sky which are hidden to our naked eyes.

If you have polarized sunglasses though, you could, just like the bee, use them to locate the sun under cloud cover, simply by knowing that light is polarized at 90 degree angles to the source, then following the rings of concentric polarization toward the sun. This is how bees do at least part of their navigation; they read the patterns of polarized rings in the sky, allowing them to infer the location of the sun even if it’s hidden, and then communicate the locations of food sources or possible nest locations relative to the sun.

 

To communicate this information, they use two distinct languages: Round Dance and Waggle Dance. Interestingly, the bees only need to switch to Waggle Dancing to communicate if the food source is more than a certain distance away, depending on the species of bee, perhaps 25-100 meters away (some sources quote more).

 

The Round Dance is simple and does not communicate directional information because it doesn’t need to. When executing the Round Dance to communicate a food source, the bee distributes (at request) samples of the food she found to any bees waiting on a mission. This helps the other bees know what they’re looking for. Those who saw and interpreted the dance and smelled the samples then fly out of the nest in all directions, using their sense of smell to guide them. To make the task easier, the scout who provided the mission details also marked the food source with her scent glands, so any scout conscripted to collect from this source knows exactly what she’s looking for. If the food source is too far away to find by smell alone, bees use their Waggle language to communicate the location relative to the sun’s current azimuth. The Waggle language also provides information about distance and how much energy the bees can expect to expend while flying to the source.

 

Unlike human language, both bee languages lack arbitrariness and duality of patterning. Arbitrariness of human language means that there is no rational relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning. (Of course, we still have onomatopoeia, but words do not have to be onomatopoetic to have meaning.)

 

‘Duality of patterning’ is the ability to take a word in human language and divide it into its constituent parts such that those parts do not themselves convey meaning. But it’s worth noting that the guy who came up with these terms actually wasn’t sure about whether bee languages have duality of patterning – which he thought was the pivotal breakthrough in the evolution of language. (So take it with a pinch of salt that an armchair hobbyist thinks that despite the incredible utility of bee languages, DoP isn’t part of its toolbox.)

So when the Waggle dancing scout communicates energy expenditure, she does it by repeating the moves of her dance a certain number of times. Each individual iteration of her dance is called a ‘circuit’. There is an inversely proportional relationship between the number of circuits a bee completes and the distance to the food. She’ll complete “8-9 circuits in 15 seconds for a food source 200 meters away, 4-5 for a food source 1000 meters away, and 3 circuits in 15 seconds for a food source 2000 meters away” (http://articles.extension.org/pages/26930/dance-language-of-the-honey-bee).

To me it makes sense to use an inverse proportionality for distance. If the bee wants to discuss food that is 1000 meters away, this means she’s already traveled at least twice that distance to forage and report, so why should she then be forced to dance a comparatively large number of circuits just to say so? She’s tired. And it’s especially logical that the need to perform large numbers of circuits is also minimized by the fact that super close distances (and thus lots of circuits) transitions to Round Dancing if it gets absurd.

There is the additional fact that food which is close by should get priority, and in some fashion, the redundancy of multiple circuits means that any bee which has not witnessed the entire series of circuits can still expect to correct for error so long as she flies out in direction indicated. The food will simply be closer than she expected. What makes the redundant nature of discussing food sources a boon, in my opinion, is that it increases the likelihood that other bees will receive and respond to the message, and it emphasizes good food sources.

But to that point about duality of patterning, distance to food is represented by distance danced. And direction relative to the hive is communicated by mapping out a diminutive version of the physical spaces and directions involved. But, for example, if she wants you to fly in the direction of the sun, she says this by wagging directly vertically. The length of that vertical wag indicates distance – distance in Waggle Language not only denotes physical distance, it is expressed as a physical distance. And if the food source is not in the direction of the sun, then the bee would indicate that by wagging the food’s direction using the hive as a point of origin.

It’s fascinating to me that since the sun’s location is central to the bee’s language, the truth value of any statement a bee makes about the location of food is subject to decay. The sun is moving at .25 degrees per minute across the sky. The bee’s truth statements are fleeting. A waggle dance delivered 45 minutes ago and captured by scientists on video is no longer true. The language is volatile. Fragile. Limited to the now. A limitation which human languages mitigate through past, present and future verb tenses. In bee language, something just is. It never was or will be.

But, it turns out, long-term evolution does not raise slouches. Bees actually do have an understanding of time, and when reporting the direction of food, they adjust the coordinates they express to keep pace with the sun.

From start to finish, a bee’s conversation looks something like this, starting with the bee standing on a special stage near the hive entrance where all attempts to recruit other bees are supposed to occur:

“EVERYONE, HEAR ME OUT!” – this is done using a quick squeak sound generated by thrumming the honeycomb. It’s meant entirely to get everyone’s attention. She continues, “Found food about 1200 meters away. It’s at a 30 degree angle relative to the hive. HEY, YO! I’M STILL TALKING!” (Again with the thrumming.)

She continues, “I’m telling you people, it’s super good!” (A bee’s apparent level of excitation is a component in their language as an indicator of food quality. This is an example of a ‘graded’ signal. If you prick your finger, you might say “ow”. If you smash your finger in a door, you might scream “OWWWW!”. Your signal is graded – its intensity scales proportionally with the stimulus.)

Another bee then interjects. “Oh? Let me see a piece of the food.” This request for a sample is done by a member of her audience and is communicated via thrumming.

All of this occurs with a marked precision and order. Enough that the bees are able to understand one another and have been using their two coded languages and rituals for 100 million years. To recap, the manner in which bees model their universe to describe the location of food is an oval or figure-eight whose degree of rotation is relative to the sun and perpendicular to the force of gravity, and all declarative statements about food locations are carried out by analyzing concentric rings of polarized light in the sky and estimating distance as inversely proportional to the number of times a bee repeated her story.

But until this point in my rant, I’ve been getting away with something.The language I’ve been using to describe what the bees are doing is incredibly misleading. For example, phrases like “…if she wants you to fly in the direction of the sun, she says this by…”

Bees do not actually use language. A bee doesn’t “say” anything in the sense that she is compelled to share an idea with her hive mates. She cannot tell her hive mates that she loves the sensation of wind rustling through her setae. She can only tell them about food. Her impressively complex system of communication is hard-coded to her DNA. She was born with her “language” and does not need to acquire it from any other bee. And there has been some suggestion that her dance is involuntary, governed entirely by internal processes and triggered by external stimuli. That her language, her mode of communicating, when and where she speaks, is not her choice. Her language is something which just happens to her. Like a sneeze. It is specific to her species. If she is a European bee, for example, she cannot understand the differently hardcoded language of Asian bees, nor can they understand her. Surprisingly however, experiments have shown that she can learn the language of another species.

But let’s talk about flowers for a minute. We know how bees see—what they’re capable of expressing with their ‘language’. We know that their visual system is complex. And as flowers have evolved alongside the bees, so too has a secret language evolved between the bee and the flower. Flowers have evolved splashes of enticing patterns intended only for bees to see. They make direct appeals to bees in a symbolic system that is not part of the visual spectrum of humans.

Some flowers have evolved impressive methods of signaling to bees, such as nanostructures on their pedals which scatter blue light in a manner visible quite noticeable to bees (but not humans),

Where we see a field that is a blur of simple yellow flowers, bees see each individual flower (remember their high flicker threshold) with various dark, rich, high contrast bulls-eyes in their centers, or landing strips guiding the bees directly to the food the flowers are offering in exchange for simply rubbing against them while taking their nectar.

(You can see the ultraviolet and/or polarized patterning of flowers here- http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html#top/ )

Additional evidence shows that flowers also have complex heat patterns in their petals—visible to bees. These patterns are shaped to point out the location of nectar, just like the UV patterns. And the patterns themselves are up to 5 degrees Celcius warmer than the rest of the flower.

Once spotted, mechanisms for getting the flowers to release their pollen vary. In some cases, bees simply need to rub themselves against the flower’s stamen. In others, bees compel the flowers to release their pollen via an exchange of electrostatic charge. In still other cases, the bees trigger the pollen release through the beating of their wings – a mechanism that is frequency specific and therefore species specific.

There is no doubt that in some way, on some level of interpretation, the flowers “offer” their nectar in exchange for the precious gift of the bee’s mobility. The flower feeds the hive in exchange for the bees transporting their pollen around. Some plants, in fact, cannot reproduce without the intervention of bees and other pollenators. But to call it an offering without caveats is an anthropomorphic misnomer. The plants and the bees have developed this relationship through establishing a cascade of beneficial ‘adjacent possibilities’.

A small dark UV dot on a flower gets passed on to another. And another. And the bees see it, and learn to associate that blue dot with the taste of that flower’s nectar. And by taking the nectar, it opens the possibility of more pollenation for that particular family of flowers. Any additions of more blue to that small blue splotch get rewarded and passed down, and the bees see more blue and take more nectar, etc. It’s a positive feedback loop, and it’s arguable that the bees and the flowers may as well be automatons following expressing a simple set of rules.

It could be true and likely is true that the bees and the semaphoric languages between them and their system of shared interests isn’t known or understood by either of them. The bees are just doing what their designs tell them to do, and the plants are just expressing what their genetic plans have provided them. Both just doing what they’re meant to do. Compelled to do, having no idea the roles they play in the larger system. No understanding that just by satisfying their basic urges, they are keeping the world alive and radiant and full of life.

And the languages and signals between them simply aren’t their own. The languages arise spontaneously and are reinforced through generations of increasing utility. Yet despite this mindlessness they show a startling degree of complexity paired with a rational sort of clarity. It’s almost enough to claim design.

Some of us do claim design, and some of us don’t. Those of us who do often claim that the world must be dry and meaningless to those of us who don’t. I belong to the latter camp, but contrary to those beliefs, my life is full of meaning and purpose and fulfillment.

I find myself wondering whether or not the normative struggles of people, the day to day feelings of great purpose and utter hopelessness, the tragedy, the triumph, our great achievements and failures, are all part of some grand scheme or grand order that is beyond our comprehension. I wonder if the true machination of human nature, of consciousness, is a cog on some level of complexity beyond the reach of our ken.

Beyond our senses, beyond the reach of science and mathematics, and its fixed domain. Maybe from some vantage point, some macroscopic position on an indescribably inclusive scale, everything is going just as it should.

Just as it is possible that, in spite of her native fluency, the bee’s “language” is truly beyond her comprehension, is it also possible that the true nature of the human experiment is revealed in some domain of knowledge we simply have no access to? And if so, is it possible to sneak a peek?

Keep in mind that I’m not talking about god or gods here. I’m imagining only that there may be some aspect of human nature that functions on a level far beyond our ability to sense or conceive. Something like a hyperobject – non-local, phased, inter-objective, viscous, temporally undulating…beyond us.

A simple, almost comical version of this might be “What if the planet is alive, and we’re just…vermin? Like fleas?” But of course, beyond even that.

And what if all the urges we fulfill, all of us who, carrying arms full of grocery bags which then drop to the ground in a cacophony of smashing glass bottles just at our front doors, are actually passing information to other processes, as though we are just the organs mouthing the whispered words from one transcendent object to another, and keeping this whole god damned wheel turning for the fulfillment of some purpose ineffable to humans? I needed to drop those groceries. How else would X become Y?

How does the way I do whatever-it-is-that-makes-me-unique serve some great purpose, and what eddies of possibility swirl around me? What seemingly random things occurring in my life are actually scripted? Enabled by my quirks? What choices cause meaningful adjacent possibilities to collide with my life and become realized, and how can I keep them positive for everyone involved?

I feel like I’ve seen some of those things at work. Incidents that present themselves as coincidence but which were enabled by some sort of action on my part, or on the part of other people.

For example, I worked in the garden center of a Target store in Palm Desert when I was 18 years old. I didn’t really know anyone in the area except my roommate at the time. But one day a woman and her two daughters came to my register and the three of us ended up talking for an unbelievable four hours. I’m not sure how I managed to keep their attention, but the conversation was fun, exciting, and just kept going. I learned about them, they learned about me. The girls were about my age and were trying to figure out where they wanted to go to college. Their father (who was not present) was a French chef specializing in the foods of New Orleans. The mom had this quiet presence as though she could see right through me but there was nothing disapproving about her quiet gaze. And when engaged, she talked just as much as everyone else. This beautiful family, bending the ear of a random cashier in a Target store, and standing patiently while he did the same. It was a positive exchange…the garden center closed, they took it as their cue to leave, and they were gone.

5 years later, I was working at a gothic/industrial retail store, 140 miles away from the Target in Palm Desert. A mom and her two daughters came in. Somehow we got to talking. I learned about them, they learned about me. The two girls were about my age and attending SDSU. Their mom regarded me with a kind of serene approval, she smiled at me a lot, and was animated when the conversation turned her way, and…Wait a minute. We stood around at the register for about 3 hours before realizing it. They were the same two girls and their mother from 5 years before. And somehow, there we were, doing precisely the same thing.

Was I supposed to believe that these two young women and their mother just talk to every cashier they can for hours at a time? They explained themselves. It had only ever happened once before…with me. And by a further twist of fate, their father was opening a New Orleans style cafe next door to my store. I got to know them a lot better after that.

Was this just coincidence? Was there some series of non-visible signs passing between us? Did something about my behavior attract them to me, and did something about their behavior attract me to them? Are we just busy bees being triggered by environmental cues to follow that nice-smelling flower? Am I specially designed to like people with metaphorical floral patterns like this family had, and were they drawn to me for similar reasons?

Once, I was driving West on the 94 and stopped to help a guy push his pickup a quarter mile to the gas station. He didn’t have gas money, so I paid for his gas, helped prime his engine, and left. A few years later, I pulled over on the 805 to help an old man and his son push-start their car. The old man was too frail to help, and he didn’t understand the clutch-dropping method. So I pushed while the son got it started. As I was leaving, the son said “Hey, did you stop to help us on the 94?” It turned out to be the same guy, and he remembered me.

We can call it coincidence if we like, but it most definitely is not random. It couldn’t have happened if I wasn’t in the habit of pushing people’s cars around (and perhaps if he wasn’t in the habit of owning problem cars). I find myself pushing or jumping or poking under the hood of strangers’ cars about once per week. Running into him again was an adjacent possibility we generated through our habits, and given that the outcome was just more goodness, it’s easy to see a use for a kind of ritualization of good acts. Simple acts of kindness have a net benefit for society as a whole.

And now I’m gonna get even weirder. I had a great fucking party on the 26th. But May 28th, my actual birthday, was a shit day for me. All due to internal stuff. For example, me thinking too much about how little I’ve accomplished in life with moderate talent. It was all triggered by something that had happened in the real.

But anyway, remember when I was complaining about having the recurring line from a Billy Joel song playing in my dreams? The line was “But it just may be the lunatic you’re looking for”. Over, and over and over again. Well that continued for days after my post. It didn’t help that my friends were finding reasons to use the phrase as a sort of rib-poke (although it was hilarious).

Well on my birthday, it stopped. I had just brought food to Victoria’s office so we could eat together on her break. And while we were eating we watched a confused looking old guy walking around asking people for help. They rolled their car windows up on him and ignored him. He finally approached us, said his car had broken down and he needed a jump, so I bade farewell to Victoria and drove the guy to his car a couple blocks away.

His name was Enrique and he was from Mexico. He was trying to get back home across the border but his car just died. I tell you, we sat out there trying to get it started for an hour. Me, double parked on 10th avenue. Him apologizing profusely for taking my time.

“It’s ok, man. I wasn’t doing anything tonight!” Except feeling utterly depressed.

I finally gave up. Told him I had AAA and would have his car towed to his family’s house in Chula Vista. It was going to cost $58 due to the extra mileage, but I lied to Enrique and told him it was free. I’d just slip the driver the cash.

So while we waited for the truck, he kept trying to jump it. He started pouring water over the terminals. And they’d smoke, and I’d tell him to stop. But he’d say “Just a little more time, and let’s try again!” By now it had been an hour and a half, and I was losing patience with his stubborn insistence that it was the battery and not the starter, but I let him do his thing.

The tow truck shows up, with that huge powerful engine and massive battery, and it jumps his car instantly (and at no additional charge, pun intended). Enrique and I did a dance and hugged and parted ways. But when I got back into my car, the battery terminal must have briefly been disconnected while we were futzing around, because the radio was completely reset. When I turned on the car, all pumped up and happy and feeling good about what had just happened, my car stereo started blaring from the radio, from the exact spot: “But it just may be the lunatic you’re looking for!”

And I started laughing and drove home. It was the first time hearing an ear worm cured it. And I felt a lot better about my life.

And this is what I mean about our inability to see the true meaning behind all the little absurdities of life. That little thing with the stereo…and deriving meaning from it…that’s all me. It would be ridiculous to think that somehow that moment was a signal from somewhere. A cue. But that’s what human beings do. If it’s truly random, then deriving deep meanings from random instances is something human beings have always done, and it’s gotten us this far. It’s not a perfect world by any means. But there just isn’t anything good or useful about claiming it was nothing at all.

So I’ll choose to believe – with lots of caveats – because I don’t discriminate against modes of knowing. And it just may be the lunatic I’m looking for. And the message I got was “just keep on doing what you’re doing”.