Do they instinctively “know” they will die by stinging a human?
In: Biology
Follow up question: How could you possible know this ?
i reckon they don’t believe it will kill them: they just think this will make the threat go away!
Using a human example, if we weren’t taught that sex = baby, would we know that having sex will give us a baby? Or would we just do it for fun and a consequence would be a baby. I doubt a bee would know it’s going to die, although claiming any certainty on this would make me a fool. I can hardly understand my girlfriend sometimes let alone an insect.
Individual insects don’t have an ego they way mammals do. They have evolved to ensure the survival of the hive. So the concept of “I’m sacrificing myself for the good of the colony” wouldn’t be in the thought process. They react instinctively to threats, even if it means the individual will die, because doing so has assured their survival for hundreds of millions of years.
Thinking of bees as individuals is kind of a mistake. Obviously they are, biologically speaking, but a lot of their ‘thought’ process comes from pheromones and instinctive observation of the bees around them.
So you could draw a similarity between bees and cells, with pheromones transmitting information instead of hormones. Think of white blood cells; some are often destroyed when they attack a particularly nasty infection. They aren’t ‘aware’ of it because their programming is only responding to chemical markers.
If a Bee stings you. And you dont forcefully remove her. You will see that the Bee will start going in circles around the entrywound and slowly remove the stinger herself.
They only die when you try to brush them of and in the process u tear(?) their guts out. (Sry 4 English)
So i am going to say that the bee does not expect to die from stinging (even large Targets)
We always like to humanise animals, as if they would think and feel the same way as us. But of course they do not, or at least we have no way of knowing if they do, but most likely they do not.
Bees have an instinctive drive to sting enemies if they feel their colony could be in danger, but as to whether they do this full knowing they will die doing so, or if that thought never crosses their mind: we don’t know. I personally doubt it, but we can’t even really measure this thought process going on in humans, let alone in animals as hard-to-communicate-with as bees.
They really filled our heads with total bullshit in school in the 90s.
The whole bees will just kill themselves whenever they use their stingers is one. Learning literally anything about the pilgrims also comes to mind. Pointless half truths.
Can’t tell if someone’s said it yet, but bees can sting most things and be fine. It’s humans in particular with our smooth squishy skin that makes it hard to remove their stingers from
Think star trek like the Borg. They do it all for the hive mind. When they sting you they are trying to assimilate
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