[HN Gopher] Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relatio...
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Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
Author : Petiver
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-04-15 16:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (longreads.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (longreads.com)
| skadamou wrote:
| If you found this interesting but don't want to dive into reading
| Darwin's works (as the author seems to imply we should) I highly
| recommend Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". I haven't read "On
| the Origin of Species" but I'd bet "The Selfish Gene" will
| probably be a more efficacious read for most people
| buran77 wrote:
| > For the next 250 years, despite the best efforts of the English
| to free themselves from this commercial yoke, the secret of that
| prodigious dye remained unknown to all but a select fortunate few
| of Spanish producers. But no production secret can stay that way
| forever, and so in the closing years of the eighteenth century,
| British spies succeeded in spiriting away the tightly kept
| formula: in order to obtain the longed-for carmine, you needed
| cochineals, and to get cochineals you had to have prickly pears.
|
| History makes this point again and again, spying seems to be the
| best way every superpower kickstarted many of their efforts.
| ajuc wrote:
| I find it highly unlikely they couldn't solve this mystery for
| 250 years given that a similar insect -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal was used for
| producing very similar dye in Central and Eastern Europe for
| centuries already at that point, and was one of the main
| exports of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (till the imported
| dye won over because of higher yields = cheaper price).
|
| To this point the month June in Polish ("czerwiec") and the
| color red ("czerwony") are derived from the word "czerw" which
| means "worm".
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| It could be they knew it was an insect but couldn't discern
| which one. There are after all tens to hundreds of thousands
| of new world insect species.
|
| It also could be a Gladwellian over fancification.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| The two insects don't seem to be that closely related, and
| red dye comes from a variety of sources. Besides, even if the
| English suspected that there was some kind of Mexican
| cochineal, the mystery of how to farm it would still be a
| problem.
|
| >till the imported dye won over because of higher yields =
| cheaper price
|
| I'd be interested to know if this is true, or if the imported
| dye was more valuable for being a brighter colour. Do you
| have a source? Wikipedia is not specific about the reason for
| the decline in demand of Polish cochineal.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| While it did happen numerous times, it's also going to be
| repeated far more often than "eventually the British figured it
| out independently/bought the secret." Superpowers like to boast
| about their achievements after all.
| pvaldes wrote:
| The prosaic reality is that bumblebees don't have any particular
| feelings about cats. Not more that they would feel about other
| carnivores. Using the same argument we could easily link being
| rich in England with the presence of rats in their house (that
| also eat lots of mice); or other similar nonsense.
|
| (But, yep. I agree that this old histories full of literary
| licenses feel warm inside and are entertaining as long as we take
| in mind that literature is not the same as science).
| t-writescode wrote:
| Whenever we over-anthropomorphize animals, we are disappointed;
| but, whenever we under-anthropomorphize them, we tend to be
| surprised.
|
| The truth is somewhere in the middle, probably closer to us
| humans than not in their emotional complexity, for many, many
| more animals than we give credit.
| foxhop wrote:
| I disagree, I have cat mint at my house and my cat would sleeps
| under the shade of the plant while at least a hundred bumble
| bees collect nector and pollen from the bright purple flowers.
| My cat eats insects like grasshoppers and moths but was not
| scared of the bees, or tried to catch any, and many landed on
| her. Sometimes nature is stranger than reality, cat mint has
| similar to properties to catnip.
|
| The cats appear to understand the bumblebees, the bumblebees do
| not pay much attention to people or cats. The mint has direct
| relationships with both animals and insects. Unless of course
| if you start rooting around in their underground nests, at
| which point the will fly toward your head like a mimi drone and
| force you to stop with their persistent dive bombs. I've never
| been stung but they get aggressive when protecting brood.
|
| This was at least a 3 way simbiotic relationship.
|
| My cat passed away November 2019, mice live under the cat mint
| plant now.
|
| I have kittens planned in preparation fo next year's gardening
| season.
|
| Video is related (shut off audio, it's poor quality):
|
| https://youtu.be/cLm7nBy7M9g
|
| I can't explain the relationships but yet they still persist
| and can be witnessed in real time.
| vhold wrote:
| Agreed, although it would be interesting if it turned out that
| bumblebee queens are attracted to the smell of cat urine when
| choosing where to establish a hive. Seems like that, or
| something similar, would be a possible evolutionary adaptation.
| Then you could say they have a "feeling" for cats.
| RobertoG wrote:
| >>"I am sure that many of the erudite readers of this little book
| know On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin inside and out. "
|
| I can't parse that sentence. Does it make sense? (English is not
| my first language)
| rvieira wrote:
| I mean ... I get what he's saying but no, it's not well written
| and it's tautological. Since erudite literally means having a
| deep knowledge:
|
| "I am sure many experts on X know X inside out"
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| Erudite may be referring to generally well-read. Anyway, the
| sentence reads ok to me fwiw.
| rvieira wrote:
| I'd agree, except it reads to me as "many of the erudite
| readers _of this_ little book", it seems to imply erudites
| of Darwin's book.
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| "this little book" refers to "The Nation of Plants" -
| from which this piece is an excerpt. It's probably more
| obvious when you're holding the book, as opposed to
| reading an excerpt on the internet.
| rvieira wrote:
| Well, in that case I stand corrected :) It makes sense.
| mrkstu wrote:
| It helps when you see that this article is actually an excerpt
| from a book, without that knowledge the sentence doesn't really
| parse.
| RobertoG wrote:
| Ah, that's it, thanks! For some reason I was thinking "this
| little book" was Darwin book (that it's actually quite
| small).
| _Microft wrote:
| Not a native speaker either but it seems like an acceptable
| sentence. Here is a slightly reworked version that might be
| easier to understand. The brackets mark where I added something
| or left something out:
|
| "I am sure that many [...] readers of this [...] book know [the
| book] _' On the Origin of Species'_ (by Charles Darwin) inside
| and out."
|
| Edit: "to know something inside and out" means to be very
| familiar with something.
| guerrilla wrote:
| The book is the book that the article is an excerpt from, not
| Darwin's.
| _Microft wrote:
| From my point of view this is still clear in the shortened
| sentence.
| nielu wrote:
| Well, I'm also not a native speaker, but it makes sense to me.
| Author is implying that every reader of his book knows "On the
| Origin of Species" very well.
| [deleted]
| foo_foo_can_do wrote:
| looks right. You could re-write it as follows for clarity: "I
| am sure that many of you are familiar with Darwin's book On the
| Origin of Species"
| sammalloy wrote:
| > There is a famous story along these lines told for the first
| time by the German biologists Ernst Haeckel and Carl Vogt. As the
| story goes, the fortunes of England would seem to depend on cats.
| By nourishing themselves on mice, cats increase the chances of
| survival of bumblebees, which, in turn, pollinate shamrocks,
| which then nourish the beef cows that provide the meat to nourish
| British sailors, thus permitting the British navy--which, as we
| all know, is the mainstay of the empire--to develop all of its
| power. T. H. Huxley, expanding on the joke, added that the true
| force of the empire was not cats but the perseverant love of
| English spinsters for cats, which kept the cat population so
| high.
|
| As a point of curiosity, there is a similar observation found in
| the Buddhist Pali Canon (I think), popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh
| in his 1987 book "Old Path, White Clouds". It is apparently a
| very old text, commonly referred to as the "universe in a teacup"
| in certain circles.
|
| To summarize, one can be said to discern the entire universe in a
| simple teacup (or bowl) in the same way that one can trace the
| power of the British Empire to a cat.
|
| > Without water, the potter would not have been able to mix the
| clay he used to fashion the bowl....Fire was necessary to
| complete the bowl. Looking deeply, I can see the presence of heat
| and fire in the bowl...I see the air. Without air, the fire could
| not have burned and the potter could not have lived. I see the
| potter and his skillful hands. I see his consciousness. I see the
| kiln and the wood stacked in the kiln. I see the trees the wood
| came from. I see the rain, sun, and earth which enabled the trees
| to grow...I can see thousands of interpenetrating elements which
| gave rise to this bowl...Contemplating the bowl, it is possible
| to see the interdependent elements which gave rise to the
| bowl...these elements are present within and without the bowl.
| Your own awareness is one of the elements. If you took away heat
| and returned it to the sun, if you returned the clay to the earth
| and the water to the river, if you returned the potter to his
| parents and the wood to the forest trees, could the bowl still
| exist? [...] Look deeply at this bowl, and you can see the entire
| universe. This bowl contains the entire universe.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| The universe in a teacup touched me deeply. Changes how I look
| at the world.
|
| Thank you for sharing this story.
| quesera wrote:
| And similarly: For want of a nail the shoe was
| lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For
| want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider
| the message was lost. For want of a message the battle
| was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
| And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
|
| This formulation appears to be at least a few hundred years
| old. Antecedents are recorded back to the 1300s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail
| bori5 wrote:
| I first heard this on a Todd Rundgren DVD
| https://youtu.be/luHRsRWSdoU
| [deleted]
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Kinda makes Milton Friedman's _Lesson of the Pencil_ feel even
| more oversimplified than it already is
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > If there is someone who still has this gap in their education,
| you are urged to fill it without any further delay.
|
| Maybe Origin holds up better than I would guess but honestly, I'm
| never going to read that thing. You've got time to read a few
| thousand books in your life. And I would bet there are many
| modern books which cover the same material with a more accessible
| bent and more up to date and comprehensive information.
|
| I'm not saying this as some kind of philistine. I studied
| literature for several years at university. I enjoy it. I've read
| Dante, Ovid, Thucidydes, Chaucer, Kant, and many more. But most
| those books are really interesting in historical or pedagogical
| kind of way. They show you the development of writing as it
| progressed. And they demonstrate the changing of human philosophy
| and epistemology. But frankly, most modern people can derive the
| same concepts and style as they've been handed down and filtered
| through subsequent authors.
|
| Despite the hullabaloo about people declining to read, we live in
| an amazing literary time. Really good books are being written
| right now on just about every subject. The writing world is so
| competitive that authors really have to hone their skill.
| Especially in the non-fiction category which for several decades
| has been under a deluge of well researched, focused and didactic
| books.
| jbrot wrote:
| The claim "you've only got time to read a few thousand books"
| surprised me, but some back of the napkin math strongly
| supports it. Assuming it takes a week to read a book and 70
| years of literacy only gives you time for around 3500 books. A
| more avid reader might average, say, 3 books a week---but then
| you only get to around 10,000 books. Now, a monk might be able
| to read 30 books in a week and get to 100,000, but
| pragmatically "a few thousand" seems to be an accurate
| accounting for a person who doesn't dedicate a large portion of
| their life towards reading.
| MathematicalArt wrote:
| I recommend "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler. In short,
| not every sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even book is of
| equal informative importance. To read all literature as if
| everything is equally important is really a mistake. Once one
| recognizes this, it is then ideal to read only at the level
| of detail and focus as is required for the particular work.
|
| What does it mean to have _read_ a book? To read every single
| word and symbol? To understand the key ideas and points?
|
| Is every book going to be one hundred percent new ideas to
| you or are there thematic riffs that allow you to shortcut
| portions of it without loss of understanding of the entire
| work?
| ordu wrote:
| _> What does it mean to have read a book? To read every
| single word and symbol? To understand the key ideas and
| points?_
|
| To understand what the author thought at the time, what he
| was trying to say, what he had said really, how he came to
| his ideas, ... One cannot predict what he'll find in a book
| before book will be finished. You cannot know what you do
| not know. The only way is to read it through.
|
| Sometimes I read books twice in a row. From the title to
| the last page. With all the "thanks", with the contents
| section, even leafing through a section of literature.
| Because you never know what you might find.
|
| When I need just key ideas from a book I could find them in
| internet, because someone have them written in her blog. It
| would take, probably, 10 minutes to read, and why to bother
| myself with the book?
| kiliantics wrote:
| Maybe we don't all need to read the original Darwin, but I do
| think there is a serious gap in most peoples' knowledge of how
| the natural world actually functions, how all the components in
| an ecosystem are interdependent and necessary. There is a
| framework of understanding that used to be common knowledge
| which now only experts and enthusiasts possess. I fear that
| most people in positions to make decisions that impact our
| natural environment have insufficient understanding of the
| potential consequences.
|
| Our failure to keep people educated on these matters to a base
| level has probably seriously contributed to the ecological
| catastrophe we are experiencing and digging ourselves ever
| deeper into. People have been taught to have more faith in
| industrial and technological solutions to any problems, rather
| than appreciating a need to be stewards of the life support
| systems of this world that we depend on.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > I'm never going to read that thing.
|
| Is surprisingly accesible and easy to follow in fact. Such way
| to write science using logic and linking obvious facts instead
| to trying to wrap all in math glitter couldn't happen today.
| guscost wrote:
| > couldn't happen today
|
| Well, except for _Basic Economics_ ;)
| EEMac wrote:
| You get bonus points for the term "math glitter"!
| wsinks wrote:
| But is it as easily accessible as "Seeing Nature: Deliberate
| Encounters with the Visible World"?
|
| The bar of accessible is much much lower than the Origin of
| Species.
| ajlai wrote:
| It actually holds up really well. Not long, and easy to read.
| It's been a while since I read it, but I remember being
| surprised at its simplicity.
| powerset wrote:
| +1 For recommending Origin as surprisingly enjoyable and
| worthwhile. The theory itself is explained clearly and quite
| interesting, but I think that's more of a bonus, and actually
| the best part is witnessing an early application of the
| scientific method, and getting the historical context for how
| the scientific method was developed. Very helpful context for
| understanding and thinking critically about modern science.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Today no one would chose an introduced species like cats as an
| example of symbiosis. Outdoor cats are an invasive species which
| are destroying the native bird populations, and as a result the
| larger food chain. They are a huge problem for ecosystems.
| nessus42 wrote:
| _> Outdoor cats are an invasive species which are destroying
| the native bird populations_
|
| This is certainly true for feral cats, but I'm highly skeptical
| about this claim being true for owned indoor/outdoor cats.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| You're right that it's much worse for feral cats, but pets
| are also a problem. Here's a good study that tracked house
| cats specifically https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/world/pet-
| cats-disrupt-wildli...
|
| > On average, the study found that house cats killed anywhere
| between 14.2 to 38.9 prey per 100 acres, per year. That
| averages out to about 3.5 prey each month per cat. The
| researchers believe this large number is due to the fact that
| neighborhoods can include a high density of cats -- more so
| than wild predators living in the wild.
| yw3410 wrote:
| The RSPB in the UK found no evidence of cats causing the
| decline and attributes it to a decline in habitat.
|
| [1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-
| wildlife/advice/gardening-...
| nessus42 wrote:
| "Prey". Well that's a pretty generic term. Perhaps much of
| this "prey" are the mice that are a danger to bumblebees.
| bredren wrote:
| I've heard this many times but do not know enough to say how
| big of a problem it is ecologically.
|
| I walk my cat on a leash (am on a walk now) and he is the first
| cat I've not allowed outside on his own.
|
| Cat walking and the belief you've espoused is extremely
| decisive, but not for the reason you've said.
|
| Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that one
| doesn't really care that much for the animal, because they will
| make time to monitor it.
|
| I'm certain it makes no sense that cats are allowed to roam
| free, no more than dogs.
|
| But it has taken many years for me to get to this position.
| nessus42 wrote:
| _> Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that
| one doesn't really care that much for the animal_
|
| This is untrue. I've owned both indoor cats and
| indoor/outdoor cats. Anyone who has seen the joy that a cat
| experiences while outdoors would never claim that a cat owner
| who wants their cat to experience this joy, "doesn't really
| care that much for the animal".
|
| _Maybe_ an outdoor cat will live a shorter life than an
| indoor cat, but that hasn 't been my personal experience. In
| fact, I had an outdoor cat that lived for 22 years. In any
| case, a shorter but happier life is not without its merits.
|
| The cat I currently have is an indoor-only cat, but she only
| rarely displays the kind of joy that my outdoor cats would
| routinely. As for walking her on a leash, I have tried, but
| she will not tolerate the harness, and will manage to escape
| from it if I persist.
| bredren wrote:
| You are right that my phrasing was incorrect. I have
| rephrased this with more context in a reply to a sibling
| comment.
|
| I think you should reconsider harness training. It is
| normal for the cat to "act dead" at first and it takes time
| to get them used to a leash. Like months.
|
| But once they associate the harness with trips outside, the
| cat can have many of the experiences of "outdoor" cats
| without the territorial disputes, wildlife impact, pooping
| in your vegetable garden and not getting hit by a car.
| (Which is traumatic for the driver and passengers as well)
|
| I moderate /r/adventurecats on Reddit, I encourage you to
| look into training regimens people have there and see the
| joy people and their cat companions experience with outdoor
| experiences.
| jfk13 wrote:
| The "outdoor experiences" my cats enjoy are not
| experiences they could have on a leash.
|
| Yes, they sometimes kill things; most commonly mice and
| shrews. The local rodent population seems resilient
| enough to cope.
|
| But the joy Catastrophe takes in racing up his favourite
| tree to look out over the neighbourhood, and chasing his
| tail around its branches, would rapidly end in a tangled
| mess if I tried to harness him.
|
| He's devoted and affectionate, strongly bonded with his
| humans. He also relishes his freedom, and I won't take it
| away from him.
| sosborn wrote:
| > I've heard this many times but do not know enough to say
| how big of a problem it is ecologically.
|
| https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-
| profiles/...
| bredren wrote:
| Thanks for this. I suspect that much of the idea of
| "outdoor" cats as a thing has to do with tolerance of feral
| cat populations to begin with.
|
| Whereas wild dogs are too large and aggressive to tolerate.
| NanoCoaster wrote:
| > Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that
| one doesn't really care that much for the animal, because
| they will make time to monitor it.
|
| I would never be able to walk my cat on a leash. No chance at
| all. I got her from a shelter and she's around 10-11 years of
| age (nobody quite knows, actually), I strongly suspect she's
| been without an owner for at least a few years. Meaning,
| she's a loner in general, incredibly stubborn, a little bit
| shy and very cautious when it comes to just me touching her
| outside of petting (and even that took months of getting used
| to me).
|
| Furthermore, there's no way I could keep her in my apartment
| for much longer than a few days.
|
| So I let her out on her own. Keeping her inside would make
| her unhappy pretty quickly - pets can and do get depressed in
| such cases - and probably also lead to her tearing through my
| furniture after a while :)
|
| Also, it's actually work for me to do this. Because of the
| way my apartment is set up, I can't have a cat door
| installed. So, I wait for her to return, sometimes until
| pretty late at night, because I don't want her to have to be
| outside for the night. Well, at least not when it's cold or
| raining out, she can deal pretty well with warm summer
| nights, as long as I put some food out.
|
| So, I think the assertion that owners who let their cats roam
| free therefore don't care about them as much...that just
| doesn't follow at all, imho.
|
| Now, about the potential ecological impact on the other hand,
| I'm not going to argue (even though I live in Germany and as
| far as I know, the situation is different here than in the US
| - but I'm not sure about that.).
| nessus42 wrote:
| _> So, I wait for her to return, sometimes until pretty
| late at night, because I don 't want her to have to be
| outside for the night._
|
| I've bell-trained cats that I've owned. I.e., I ring a bell
| every time before I give them a treat. When I've wanted
| them to come indoors, I ring the bell, and they've always
| come running.
| bredren wrote:
| First, it's great you took that animal in and I find no
| fault with the thing your doing. It is normal in this time.
|
| > Also, it's actually work for me to do this.
|
| This is the key point. It is work to give a cat outdoor
| experiences but not allow the cat to roam freely.
|
| The same goes for having a dog.
|
| But there is a general acceptance that the two animals
| should be treated completely differently.
|
| A wild dog would also not take well to indoor only life.
| However, the concept of adopting a feral dog is far less
| familiar because dogs are generally not allowed to roam
| cities unattended. (In the US at least)
|
| As for not caring about the animal, I need to clarify:
|
| They must care differently about that animal. It is more
| like the relationship between a farmer and farm animals
| than a companion relationship you might see dramatized in a
| cat food commercial.
|
| The reason I say that is because it is far more likely an
| "outdoor" cat will be eaten by a predator or hit by a car.
|
| The cat "owner" accepts letting the cat live it's best life
| is more important than protecting it against these dangers
| that is a choice.
|
| So I suppose these folks care differently than other
| people, because the relationship is different.
| trhway wrote:
| >Mice, argues Darwin, are among the principal enemies of
| bumblebees. They eat their larvae and destroy their nests. On the
| other hand, as everyone knows, mice are the favorite prey of
| cats. One consequence of this is that, in proximity to those
| villages with the most cats, one finds fewer mice and more
| bumblebees.
|
| the same with birds - rats are able to eat eggs, so having a
| bunch of cats on a farm/village naturally results in having a
| booming bird population.
| jonplackett wrote:
| There's also the story of the man who decided the USA needed to
| have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, so he
| imported and released them, with similarly disastrous results.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin#Starling_re...
| ivanbakel wrote:
| It seems odd to recount a historical anecdote while
| simultenously linking to a source that casts considerable doubt
| over it.
| pierrebai wrote:
| The example, taken from the Origin of Species, of the OP is
| interesting, but then it goes on to list multiple inter-
| dependencies.
|
| It does not address one question: are these inter-dependencies
| required, strict and essential to the survival of the affected
| species.
|
| IOW, are not the species flexible enough and adaptable enough
| that any change would be fixed by a substitute or a change in
| behaviour?
|
| There are many claims, both around ecology and climate changes,
| that hinge on the idea that the current state of the world as a
| whole is desirable, good and fragile.
|
| That is the main thing that always irks me. Life survived the
| extinction of the dinosaurs, multiple glaciations, etc. But it is
| always portrayed as a fragile system. That always seemed to me a
| bit hypocritical.
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