Easy to say that while not being a hostage.

Drums by the fire on shrooms was the best music epoch, after that all down hill. Stoneage gang.

Feel like here is one of a few places one can have some nice discussions, while for sure there is a general bias in opinions but people seem to at least sometimes read and answer on topic.

Came around to read the paper. Indeed very interesting - also not suited to base broader conclusions about coinciosness in insects in my opinion, the idea that culture might be supported by much simpler neuronal mechanisms is fascinating to me. Very speculative it might very well be than that even coinciosness can emerge in less complex systems then previously thought. Also bumblebees are even more dope than I previously thought. Great read thanks.

Thanks, will check the paper out.

Just give a small summary at the end maybe, like you did after I asked you? Might help yourself to stay on point.

Not a scientist my self, but I studies biology and neuroscience more specifically - just left the field. I will look more into jumping spiders, since it’s sounds interesting and I was not really aware that they are that different from other spiders. Now I’m more curious and I definitely agree that we need more research in general.

Bold claim to go from REM in sleep-like state to dreams and consciousness, and the original paper is not making that claim.

A good example is how they are able to recognise when certain prey is acting odd, deduce it’s injured and drop their stealthy approach for a more direct one. They’re also capable of remembering their environment and using indirect and often complex paths to sneak up on prey.

All of this seems rather possible even with basic learning mechanisms on molecular level. Not sure why you would claim that this need consciousness. But if you have a paper on this topic I would be more than interested to read them.

“Same” neurons (they don’t have all the neuron types we have but in general one can say it’s the same neurons), just no complex brain structures. You can have very complex behavior completely reliant on pheromone systems, quite well studied in ants. I’m not to familiar with bumblebees so I would need to look into literature, but for example simple learning already happens at molecular level and does not require any thinking at all.

Thanks for explaining, I somehow didn’t get your point.

Not sure how your answer is related to my.

My thinking to challenge myself/ourselves: Then how do whole colonies decide and plan resources? When to gave truce or war with the neighbouring colonies (of same or completely different species?). Their war strategies resemble human wars without technology/weapons. They also cultivate insects, plants, and fungi. Some within colonies plan, deceive, and try to develop a new queen (instead of the queen doing it in purpose/strategy).

We understand most of your questions quiet well. It’s been a long time since I studied biology and I’m not working in that field anymore so I won’t be able to give you most answers from memory, but if you are interested you will find a lot of research on those topics. It’s mostly really rather automatic responses through pheromone systems with involuntary responses. Especially the wars of ants are quite well understood in that regard.

Cephalopod have different but also rather complex brain structures. Again - insects just completely lack higher brain anatomy. If you into those question I would highly recommend you to take an introductory lecture into neuroscience online. We don’t understand everything but we understand some things quiet well.

Insects don’t really have brains. The complexity of their ganglia is not really comparable to what we consider a brain and seems rather unlikely that they have anything like our consciousness, just due to the difference in complexity. Does not mean we should treat them like shit, they are living creatures - but also not sure why we need to pretend they are something they are clearly not.

What is even real anymore.