Inside the mind of a bee is a hive of sensory activity
https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-mind-o...y-activity
INTRO: . . . Insects such as bees and ants are often held up as the epitome of the robotically mechanistic approach to animal nature. Scientists have long known that these creatures must possess a large behavioural repertoire in order to construct their elaborate homes, defend against intruders, and provision their young with food. Yet many still find it plausible to look at bees and ants as little more than ‘reflex machines’, lacking an internal representation of the world, or an ability to foresee even the immediate future. In the absence of external stimuli or internal triggers such as hunger, it’s believed that the insect’s mind is dark and its brain is switched off. Insects are close to ‘philosophical zombies’: hypothetical beings that rely entirely on routines and reflexes, without any awareness.
But perhaps the problem is not that insects lack an inner life, but that they don’t have a way to communicate it in terms we can understand. It is hard for us to prise open a window into their minds. So maybe we misdiagnose animal brains as having machine-like properties simply because we understand how machines work – whereas, to date, we have only a fragmentary and imperfect insight into how even the simplest brains process, store and retrieve information.
However, there are now many signs that consciousness-like phenomena might exist not just among humans or even great apes – but that insects might have them, too. Not all of these lines of evidence are from experiments specifically designed to explore consciousness; in fact, some have lain buried in the literature for decades, even centuries, without anyone recognising their hidden significance.
Based on such evidence, several biologists (notably Eva Jablonka in Tel Aviv and Andrew Barron in Sydney), and philosophers (Peter Godfrey-Smith in Sydney and Colin Klein in Canberra) now suggest that consciousness-like phenomena might not have evolved late in our history, as we previously thought. Rather, they could be evolutionarily ancient and have arisen in the Cambrian era, around 500 million years ago.
At its evolutionary roots, we think that consciousness is an adaptation that helped to solve the problem of how moving organisms can extract meaningful information from their sense organs. In an ever-changing and only semi-predictable environment, consciousness can solve this problem more efficiently than unconscious mechanisms possibly could. It involves manifold features, but some include: a grasp of time and space; the capacity for self-recognition; foresight; emotions; and top-down processing....
MORE (details): https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-mind-o...y-activity
Barely living 'zombie' bacteria in Deep Earth are made up of 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...arbon.html
INTRO: Barely living 'zombie' bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth's subsurface. Scientists believe it holds around 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon - up to 385 times more than what is in every human on the planet put together. They found 70 per cent of the Earth's bacteria live underground, with researchers calling this under-studied area the 'Galapagos of the deep'. The findings were made by scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to work out the total amount of life that exists below the ground....
MORE (details): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...arbon.html
https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-mind-o...y-activity
INTRO: . . . Insects such as bees and ants are often held up as the epitome of the robotically mechanistic approach to animal nature. Scientists have long known that these creatures must possess a large behavioural repertoire in order to construct their elaborate homes, defend against intruders, and provision their young with food. Yet many still find it plausible to look at bees and ants as little more than ‘reflex machines’, lacking an internal representation of the world, or an ability to foresee even the immediate future. In the absence of external stimuli or internal triggers such as hunger, it’s believed that the insect’s mind is dark and its brain is switched off. Insects are close to ‘philosophical zombies’: hypothetical beings that rely entirely on routines and reflexes, without any awareness.
But perhaps the problem is not that insects lack an inner life, but that they don’t have a way to communicate it in terms we can understand. It is hard for us to prise open a window into their minds. So maybe we misdiagnose animal brains as having machine-like properties simply because we understand how machines work – whereas, to date, we have only a fragmentary and imperfect insight into how even the simplest brains process, store and retrieve information.
However, there are now many signs that consciousness-like phenomena might exist not just among humans or even great apes – but that insects might have them, too. Not all of these lines of evidence are from experiments specifically designed to explore consciousness; in fact, some have lain buried in the literature for decades, even centuries, without anyone recognising their hidden significance.
Based on such evidence, several biologists (notably Eva Jablonka in Tel Aviv and Andrew Barron in Sydney), and philosophers (Peter Godfrey-Smith in Sydney and Colin Klein in Canberra) now suggest that consciousness-like phenomena might not have evolved late in our history, as we previously thought. Rather, they could be evolutionarily ancient and have arisen in the Cambrian era, around 500 million years ago.
At its evolutionary roots, we think that consciousness is an adaptation that helped to solve the problem of how moving organisms can extract meaningful information from their sense organs. In an ever-changing and only semi-predictable environment, consciousness can solve this problem more efficiently than unconscious mechanisms possibly could. It involves manifold features, but some include: a grasp of time and space; the capacity for self-recognition; foresight; emotions; and top-down processing....
MORE (details): https://aeon.co/essays/inside-the-mind-o...y-activity
Barely living 'zombie' bacteria in Deep Earth are made up of 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...arbon.html
INTRO: Barely living 'zombie' bacteria and other forms of life constitute an immense amount of carbon deep within Earth's subsurface. Scientists believe it holds around 15 to 23 billion tons of carbon - up to 385 times more than what is in every human on the planet put together. They found 70 per cent of the Earth's bacteria live underground, with researchers calling this under-studied area the 'Galapagos of the deep'. The findings were made by scientists nearing the end of a 10-year international collaboration to work out the total amount of life that exists below the ground....
MORE (details): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...arbon.html