Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Research puzzle: How did bees evolve luring, then roasting a predatory hornet to death?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

In a furnace ball made of their own bodies?

In “Japanese bees cook enemy in ‘bee ball’” (Reuters/ABC News, April 3, 2012), we learn,

When confronted with their arch-enemy, the aggressive giant Asian hornet, the honeybees will attack it by swarming en masse around the hornet and forming what scientists call a “hot defensive bee ball” – a move unique to their species.

With up to 500 bees all vibrating their flight muscles at once, the bee ball cooks the hornet to death.

This vid shows that such bees make a point of not attacking; rather, they allow the predatory hornet to enter the hive, and wait till it attacks one of them before they form the ball and roast it. Then they go out and remove its scent markers from the hive.

The move is set off by bees posted as “guards” at the entrance to the colony whenever they detect an intruder. It is thought to have evolved because the bee’s stingers aren’t strong enough to penetrate the hornet’s tough exo-skeleton, researchers say.

That’s an incomplete way of understanding the problem because the fact that “the bee’s stingers aren’t strong enough to penetrate the hornet’s tough exo-skeleton” could just be tuff luck for the bees. It doesn’t explain how the behaviour evolved, only why it provides the bees with an advantage.

“When a member of the colony, a worker drone, is killed, this is a grievous loss for the hive. Evolution has reacted in this way (for their survival),” says Masato Ono, a Japanese honeybee and hornet expert who was also part of the study.

In this case, we are saying that evolution is an intelligent force that reacts to ensure the insects’ survival because the death of a worker is a grievous loss for the hive.

It may be true. It may be evolution. But it is not Darwinian evolution.

See also: Why some people think that Monarch butterflies show evidence of design

Comments
Some male penguins incubate their young then pass the youngster off to the female. Got to wonder how that whole thing evolved by miniscule trial and error steps, lol. How many frozen penguins did it take?Mung
April 6, 2012
April
04
Apr
6
06
2012
05:21 PM
5
05
21
PM
PDT
One cannot evolve a comblex behavior such is this by chance! Ha! As Eisenstien said, " God does not like rolling and playing with a dice!" We know of Who created these. T'was Jesus.Jonas
April 5, 2012
April
04
Apr
5
05
2012
02:08 PM
2
02
08
PM
PDT
Any other takers besides evolution or magic?
Design- also not all evolution has to be Darwinian evolution-> meaning we can have evolution by design see "Evolving Inventions"Joe
April 5, 2012
April
04
Apr
5
05
2012
07:20 AM
7
07
20
AM
PDT
Any other takers besides evolution or magic?
IntelligenceDala
April 5, 2012
April
04
Apr
5
05
2012
07:13 AM
7
07
13
AM
PDT
How did bees evolve luring, then roasting a predatory hornet to death?
Not through Darwinian evolution? Well then, let me guess: Magic? Any other takers besides evolution or magic? Anyone?jurassicmac
April 4, 2012
April
04
Apr
4
04
2012
01:10 PM
1
01
10
PM
PDT
It is so uncanny how the word "evolution" always appears where it would previously be appropriate to use the word "god."Collin
April 3, 2012
April
04
Apr
3
03
2012
05:47 PM
5
05
47
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply