My Relationship with Biology, Part 1

I think my ability to "cherish" plants and animals is quite low.
However, it's not that I dislike living things, nor am I particularly bad with them.
When I was in elementary school, I raised beetles and collected insects just like any other kid, and even now, I can handle geckos or cockroaches without any trouble.
My wife and daughter seem to think of me as a "same-day free service, creature-handling department," and I spend my busy days responding to trivial emergency requests, such as a gecko getting in through a gap in the front door or a beetle landing on the ceiling.

However, despite being born as the son of a farmer, I manage to kill even cacti, and I have only played with Taro, the mixed-breed dog I've had for nearly ten years (the name itself is a bit generic), about five times.
I think they are beautiful or cute, but I don't go to botanical or zoological gardens, and I never watch animal programs.

However, I am very interested in the "creatures known as biologists."
The obsession with trying to understand someone you cannot converse with in human language.
Reading the records of their sweat-drenched, grand struggles to understand the mystery of why "life," which seemingly defies the law of increasing entropy, exists and has persisted is truly exciting. I think these people's lives must be truly enjoyable.

I would like to introduce a few books in that field that I've recently found to be hits.

"The Mind of a Bee" (Lars Chittka, Misuzu Shobo)

I remember reading something in a Japanese textbook back in elementary or junior high school about how "honeybees use dance to inform their companions of the location of food," and thinking, "Oh, that's interesting."

This book, which I happened to find, was one of the most interesting books I've read in the past year.

It is a record of the latest research on the intelligence of social insects, which goes far beyond just dancing.
For example, we humans do things like this every day, consciously or unconsciously:

"First-graders learn about spots where they won't be caught by the student guidance teacher by watching the movements of third-year seniors from a distance."
"Eating a slightly more expensive sweet than usual makes you feel somewhat positive."
"After viewing several candidates for a new home, you compare commuting distances and surrounding restaurants, and finally narrow it down to one through a family meeting."
"Even though it's a road you're driving on for the first time, you somehow know where a convenience store is likely to be."
"Simulating tomorrow's work in your brain before going to sleep."

This is a book that says, "It seems bees are doing all those same kinds of things, too."

It's not just a "selfish assumption from a human perspective"; how can we objectively and scientifically infer and prove the "mind (intelligence, emotion, consciousness)" of insects?

It is not a metaphor or anything; the fact that it seems bees (insects) possess a mind is amazing, but the numerous experiments scientists have devised to reach that conclusion are simply fascinating.
"Humans tend to make assumptions like this when looking at animals, but since there is a possibility of such bias, if we compare this with a control experiment, this doubt can be cleared."
It's hard to convey, but such examples are packed into the book.

I can only marvel at the progress of the latest technology as well.
Examining bee brain waves anatomically, or monitoring the entire life (about a few weeks) of each bee by attaching sensors to their backs...

And the way they handle that complex data full of variables,
the point of "Wow, they summarize and illustrate it so clearly!" was also geekily interesting.

There have been TV shows and books with the perspective that "it's amazing that a creature with such a simple mechanism can do complex things like humans!"

But the answer might be much, much simpler.
"Creatures capable of creating things close to human civilization and culture have intelligence and consciousness at least close to humans."
It might be because "having a large and complex brain means you need to think about things every day." Even if we humans don't want to admit it.

When I was in elementary school, during spring break, a few friends and I plucked up some lotus flowers to play baseball in a nearby rice field, and we leveled the ground to make a field. I once made a bed by piling up those lotus flowers and was taking a pleasant nap when a honeybee stung me on the back of my hand.

At that time, the bee that stung me might have
"properly recognized that the range of the body of the pest attacking its home was from here to there, and died while remembering the hive it grew up in and the faces of its companions, with the pain and resolve of tearing off the stinger unit connected to its internal organs."
It's not a novel or cheap anthropomorphism, but a scientific fact!

In the current Reiwa era, the experience of being stung by a bee might be becoming as rare as saying "I was bitten by a pit viper," but the vegetables and fruits that humans eat every day would not exist without the pollination behavior of bees.

In recent years, the mysterious phenomenon of bees disappearing in groups has become a problem all over the world. If insects, which we have treated as simple machines (we have to think that way, or we couldn't spray pesticides), really have a "mind (intelligence, emotion, consciousness)," how should we behave? I think this is a book worth reading for every human being.

To be continued in "My Relationship with Biology, Part 2."