What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
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Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#2Well, here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#3It's obvious that this is beneficial for the population, but is it (typically) beneficial for an individual?
Probably, selfish individuals would only want to try this if they're already well-fed, or if they're confident that there will be some food left over if they don't find any of their own.
So, for the benefit of the population, we should probably make sure that everyone is well-fed, so that everyone feels confident to go and find new sources of food :)
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#4Well, here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
"Hi, my name is George. I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents."
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#5It's obvious that this is beneficial for the population, but is it (typically) beneficial for an individual? Probably, selfish individuals would only want to try this if they're already well-fed, or if they're confident that there will be some food left over if they don't find any of their own. So, for the benefit of the population, we should probably make sure that everyone is well-fed, so that everyone feels confid…
Honeybees are a eusocial organism, so there's not really "selfish" in here. They're all eating from the same stores of food.
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#6Well, here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
"Hi, my name is George. I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents."
Classic Seinfeld moment - for those that haven't seen it:
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#7There is also some fraction of the sea turtle population that goes in the "wrong direction" when navigating by the Earth's magnetic fields. I believe these individuals generally do not do very well. But... this natural variation might be what allows the species to persist even as the magnetic fields shift over millions of years.
Being the rogue bee might be fine. Being the rogue turtle, well... it might be good for the species but bad for the individual.
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#8I couldn't find any other reference to this rogue bee thing (except other inspirational essays).
Wikipedia's entry on the waggle dance seems to suggest that bees often don't make use of the information in the dance. It's not some rare maverick bees per se. It's more that the information may not be important given the season or climate or presence of competition for the food. So it can be adaptive to ignore it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance#Efficiency_and_ad...
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#9There is also some fraction of the sea turtle population that goes in the "wrong direction" when navigating by the Earth's magnetic fields. I believe these individuals generally do not do very well. But... this natural variation might be what allows the species to persist even as the magnetic fields shift over millions of years. Being the rogue bee might be fine. Being the rogue turtle, well... it might be good for t…
There's also a famous clip from Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World where a penguin does something similar,[0] and I've seen it theorised (possibly in the book Empire Antarctica, but I'm not certain) that this may be a mechanism to find new breeding grounds (though, as you say, in a way that may be good for the species but is bad for most of the individuals so called).
Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
#10Well, here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Chicken is not the opposite of tuna, salmon is. Because salmon swim against the current but the tuna swim with it.