Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!kuento
From: kuento@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Animal planning
Message-ID: <1991May24.212454.31052@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Date: 25 May 91 02:24:54 GMT
References: <17580001@hpfcdj.HP.COM>
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 65

In article <17580001@hpfcdj.HP.COM>, sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) writes:
> 
> Howdy netland,
> 
> Some friends of mine and I were wondering about the particulars of
> planning in animals.  The only examples of animal planning which we
> are aware of involve actions taken in response to a current desire.
> And we were wondering if there are examples of animals planning for
> a future desire that is clearly NOT instinctive.

[examples deleted]

> Some examples in nature which appear to be planning for future desires
> but are instinctive would be: nest building in birds, collecting nuts
> in squirrels, dam building in beavers, tigers cacheing leftovers, etc. etc.
> 
> A natural example which might convince me that the animal was planning
> for future desires would be habitat building in species which do not
> always build habitats.  For example, I do not know if ALL wolves dig
> dens (thus implying it is instinctive), but if wolves in certain climates
> did not build them because they were not needed, then the wolves which do
> dig dens (in Alaska wolves dig dens) could be said to be planning for the
> future desire of being dry and warm.

All right, then...let me toss out a few examples from my own field of
expertise, bees. Honeybees store honey and pollen in order to have
something to feed their young, but also so they'll have something to
feed on during the winter. This behavior is variable, however - the
African Honeybee (the "Killer Bee"), for example, does not store
enough excess honey to survive the winter - which is why people north
of Florida, Louisiana, and Southern California (here in the US) have
little to fear about the bees establishing themselves.
	Another case is a species of Brazilian Stingless Bee (I kid
you not - there are hundreds of species) which stores large balls of
plant resin inside its nests. No one knew why they did so until they
observed one such nest under attack by a species of "robber bee" - at
which point the defenders took the resin balls and rolled them into
the entrance to plug it, thus keeping the robbers out.
	An example of variable nesting is seen in a number of Sweat
Bees, which are ground-nesting species - if a bee is digging her nest
in very moist soil, she will alter the arrangement of brood cells to
form a comb, with an air space surrounding the comb to keep the cells
dry. These combs are thus like your "wolf dens", in that they are
constructed only when the bee knows the soil is moist.

	You might well argue that all of these cases are essentially
instinctive, and I'd agree - but remember that being *ABLE* to plan
anything is itself dependent on having a brain designed for just such
a function - and that's all genetic. There is, technically speaking,
no such thing as a behavior with no genetic component. Beware of the
trap of conceiving of "instinct" and "learning" as black and white,
when all you're really doing is arbitrarily dividing up a spectrum of
shades of gray. Also remember that for the behaviors of animals in the
wild, the primary evolutionary force will be natural selection - if an
animal has no need to plan, it probably won't, and if it does need to
plan, it probably will. Until we can read minds, we're not going to
get far trying to compare *anything* to humans ;-)

> 			    Inquiring minds want to know.
> 			    Steve Kommrusch
> 			    sjk@hpfcsjk@hplabs.hp.com
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