The comment by Ruth Rosin is mildly fascinating on a number of fronts.

She declares genetically predetermined behavior (what is colloquially called "instinct") a myth. Yet we see abundant evidence of organisms that most certainly do "behave" within the bounds of their genetically-derived (developmental) body plans.

What's more, we see very different species behaving very differently: we do not see, nor do we expect to see, for example, a snail to walk on legs that aren't there. If I don't miss my guess, the snail's way of getting around is an innate behavior stipulated by its body-plan: its genetic heritage does not require it to perform "stepping" behavior. If that isn't a "genetically predetermined behavior", one must seriously wonder what else it could possibly mean.

She declares that honeybees would need to have the ability to "count" in order to communicate relevant information to each other on the location and distance of a source of food, an ability, she insists, they must have in order to perform "mathematical calculations".

Perhaps she supposes that the minds of athletes who throw and catch balls must be full of numbers associated with angles of trajectory rapidly measured to be able to solve ballistic equations in order to achieve success as well.

Yet she never mentions whether she thinks honeybees are capable of directional orientation. instead, to support her point, she goes on at length to "show" how the placement of an intermediate feeder requires honeybees to perform a calculation such as (3+5)/2=8/2=4, concluding: "This averaging requires an ability to count up to 8."

Is that really so?

Then she raises her red herring completelty clear of the water by further concluding: "As long as there is no evidence that honeybees can count, we cannot assume that they have any counting ability."

One is moved to wonder why she thinks anybody assumes honeybees know how to "count" according to her extraordinary definition, which is based on the capacity to perform a "calculation" such as human researchers might perform in order to catch a glimpse of understanding of what's going on.

How brilliantly circular...perfectly crafted to remain within the bounds of her own preconceptions of the inability of organisms to behave at all, let alone along genetic/developmental lines of reasoning.

She might as well fret over a situation like this: take a hermeticaly-sealed box full of air and take a single-instant snapshot of what's in it: what's going on inside the box? Nothing! Now add time. Now the air molecules are moving and colliding with each other. The box now "counts" with every collision between air molecules, and voila - we have something we can actually measure...but does anybody seriously think the box of air is aware it is "counting"? That it has an "ability" that can foster "calculation"? Who is doing the actual "counting" and "calculating" here? Who's responsible for measuring the world?

She finds it "utterly offensive" that the authors "do not even have the decency to mention that for over 40 years, there has been a strong, (and [she says] as far as I am concerned, fully justified), opposition to the honeybee [Dance Language] hypothesis," adding, that it "is not the proper way to do science in the 21st century, but a perfectly proper way to mislead naive readers!"

Well, perhaps Ruth Rosin can learn to distinguish between communicating fairly well-supported scientific consensus in a public forum and scientific research (um, in any century)...before she worries about the difference between an ability to count and the more primitive appreciation of quantity or intensity such as that supplied by stimulus, let alone how to appraise "decency" and what she construes to be "utterly offensive" with regard to scientific discourse.

Her's is a very strange reaction. It's unfortunate that she does not supply any supporting evidence for her own views, a requirement she finds so compulsory in others.

Perhaps she also needs to learn what properly constitutes naivete.

I have by now examined the book at the nearest Barnes& Noble book store, and find the book a far worse disaster than I even expected.

Since the authors state that insect behavior is controlled by "instinct", they obviously remain staunch disciples of the general approach to behavior, co-founded by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen, who not surprisingly shared the 1973 Nobel Prize v.Fisch was awarded for the "discovery" of the non-existent honeybee "dance language" (DL). The general approach to behavior, co-founded by Lorenz & Tinbergen is misguided & misleading, because it is based on the belief in the existence of genetically predetermined behavior, also known as "instincts"; although what the term "instinct" means today, nobody knows anymore.

I knew that Holldobler & Wilson were staunch supporters of the honeybee DL hypothesis, but before examining their book I had no idea whether they still maintain their allegiance to that stillborn hypothesis, rooted in outright scientific fraud, that is disguised by a deliberate cover-up.

What I found out is that the authors present as presumably fully experimentally confirmed, the claims that honeybees have a "dance language", an ability to measure distance flown by using an "odometer" based on "optic flow", to calculate the volume of a cavity that might serve as a new nest-site, to perform "path integration", and achieve "quorums".

All these claims are a bunch of incredible science-fiction. Honeybees do not have, never had, and never could have any such capabilities. Among others, all these capabilities require an ability to perform mathematical calculations, which, in turn, require a counting ability. So far, however, there is no valid evidence that insects can count at all. Chittka & Geiger (1995) are the only ones who undertook to examine whether honeybees can count, (under conditions where such an ability would be useful to them. They conclude that their study, (which never tested for an ability to count more than 5 items), suggests (!)that honeybees have a very primitive counting ability. A careful examination of the study, however, suffices to show that the study does not even remotely warrant any such suggestion. ([All the results are explainable, without resorting to any counting, if the trained foragers simply used distant landmark outside the large experimental area. The availability of such distant landmarks is made clear in another publication by Chittka & Geiger (1995), in the journal Ethology, of another study done the same year, in the same experimental area. Also, Chittka & Geigger interpret the results they obtained in their Anim. Behav. study, by assuming that when an intermediate-feeder is available,(which was possible only in the test with 5 identical, man-made landmarks, between the hive and the training-feeder), the majority of trained foragers opt for the intermediate-feeder, instead of the feeder at the training distance, and the feeder after the correct number of man-made landmarks (3) in the training situation. To determine where that "compromise"-feeder is located, the foragers must, however, calculate (3+5)/2=8/2=4. This averaging requires an ability to count up to 8. Thus, in interpreting their data regarding a test of whether honeybees can count up to 5, the authors already, inadvertently assumed tat the bees can count up to 8. In short, they assumed a priory that which is to be tested.)

As long as there is no evidence that honeybees can count, we cannot assume that they have any counting ability.

Holldobler & Wilson are experts on ants, but I did not even bother to check what amazing "instincts" they attribute to ants.

What I find utterly offensive is that when the authors deal with the most amazing capability ever attributed to an insect, i.e. the presumed ability of honeybees to use a "dance language", they do not even have the decency to mention that for over 40 years, there has been a strong, (and, as far as I am concerned, fully justified), opposition to the honeybee DL hypothesis. I expected them to at least attempt to counter the claims of DL opponents, but they do not even bother to do that. Instead, they simply wrote the opposition to the DL hypothesis.; which is not the proper way to do science in the 21st century, but a perfectly proper way to mislead naive readers!

All individual traits (including behavioral traits), of all living organisms, develop ontogenetically (in the individual organism), under inseparable effects of both genes & environment (nature & nurture), with additional inseparable effects of that which already exists at each point along this process of individual development. A predisposition is a possibility that exists within the developmental potential of an individual organism, but it may, or may not materialize, and it is by no means genetically predetermined that it should materialize.

The famous honeybee "dance language" (DL) does not exist, never existed, and never could exist. V. Frish's DL hypothesis, (which earned him a 1973 Nobel Prize (when the hypothesis was erroneously believed to have been properly experimentally confirmed), is a stillborn hypothesis, rooted in scientific fraud, disguised by a cover-up.

V. Frisch initially fully justifiably concluded, on the basis of his first study on honeybee-recruitment (published in an extensive German summary in 1923, and included in his short, little known publication of 1937), that honeybee=recruits use only odor, and no information about the location of any food. Moreover, the results of that study already grossly contradicted the expectations from his later, sensational DL hypothesis, as far as the effects of round dances are concerned! (According to his sensational DL hypothesis round dances cause recruits to find food only near the hive, within not more than 100m of the hive for any honeybee species, or strain.In his first study on honeybee-recruitment recruits that attended round dances found food even 1,00m from the hive.)

V. Friscg held on to his initial correct conclusion until 1945-6, when he became erroneously convinced that recruits use spatial information contained in their forgers'-dances (about the approximate site of the foragers' food-source), and supplement this (when necessary), with a short-range search for attractive odors. He then published his sensational DL hypothesis, as a presumably already experimentally confirmed hypothesis. It met with initial skepticism, but soon became a revered ruling paradigm.

When he published his DL hypothesis, he repeatedly stated that initially he erroneously believed that recruits use only odor, but he "eliminated" the early results which clearly showed that his initial conclusion was no error at all.The "elimination" fully qualifies as an act of outright scientific fraud!

In his definitive 1967(1965) book on the honeybee DL, he substituted for the "eliminated" results, the results of new tests, actually done in 1962, using round dances and a drastically different experimental design than used in his first study on honeybee-recruitment. This time his results fully fit his expectations from his sensational DL hypothesis. The substitution fully qualifies as a deliberate cover-up!

V. Frisch, however, resorted to fraud and cover-up, with the most noble, but utterly misguided intention of saving the Theory of Evolution from a crisis he, (and many others) imagined the Theory would face if the honeybee DL did not exist to provide an otherwise inconceivable adaptive value for honeybee-dances. The nobility of his intention, however, can never justify any illegitimate acts of scientific fraud and cover-up!

When Wenner & his team justifiably launched their opposition to v. Frisch's DL hypothesis, they were "rewarded" by being quickly turned into pariahs. Since then we have had a DL controversy that has been ongoing for over 40 years, with DL opponents for the most part denied the right to be heard, while criticizing a stillborn hypothesis, rooted in fraud, disguised by a cover-up!

If the DL controversy has persisted for so long, it is because although on the face of it it appears to be a controversy over some idiosyncratic behavior of honeybees, it actually constitutes the most important reflection of a much more basic controversy, over the very existence of genetic predetermination("instincts" in behavior), in ontogeny. This is the basis of a far older controversy (that has been going on since the mid 30s of last century), between European Ethology (co-founded by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen) that is based on the belief in the existence of "instincts", and Schneirla's School in Behavior (that threw "instincts" out, and incorporated, instead, Morgan's Canon, and all the ideas that led Lloyd C. Morgan (a young contemporary of Ch. Darwin), to formulate that Canon.

Supporters of the honeybee DL hypothesis are disciples of European Ethology. The belief that the DL hypothesis had already been experimentally confirmed, thus, provided European Ethology with its most impressive "validation". Not surprisingly, K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen shared v. Frisch's 1973 Nobel Prize, and the whole field of Behavioral Biology, has been in big trouble ever since then.

There is no honeybee DL, and no "instincts" either!

It is clear that ducks have a genetic predisposition to swim, dive, and fish. Certainly training is involved in this behavior as well. But bees and ants have other predispositions, and one certainly can wonder how their complex behavior arises from genetics and/or training. There is also a level of cooperation regarding specific tasks which seem to show a level of complexity that we would usually associate with single connected organisms with intent in mind. Certainly hormones and pheromones seem to have similar roles. None the less, certain specific communications in bees, like communication via dancing appear to be very complex and difficult to learn by any mechanism. And then there are issues like why chickens everywhere all seem to produce the same warning sounds when a hawk flies over. Human behavior is much more complex and if we are also driven, preprogrammed, are programmable, or communicate in mysterious ways; we probably would not be able to objectively decipher this easily either. I believe that there is a great deal going on, hidden in the commonplace that we still know very little about. There is also a general unwillingness among scientists to explore some of these topics due to the difficulties of creating repeatable data, or any data at all. Good papers on such topics are rare and probably related to fears regarding professional credibility as well.

What many biologists call "instincts" are entities that do not exist at all.

See: Beach, F. A.(1955). The descent of instinct. Psychological Rev.,62(2):401-410.