Bees on cocaine are excitable, says a recent study that we also covered in episode 7 of Grand Unified Weekly. They communicate vigorously, even hyperbolically.
Exactly like people.
Except instead of jabbering about the latest, greatest no-wave band at some l.e.s. party, bees are dancing. That’s how they tell other bees where the food is.
But why are bees affected by cocaine in this way? Or: at all?
It seems that the coca plant has evolved substances that act on (and disorder) the nervous systems of insects in order to deter insect predators. Ditto the tobacco plant.
So why do humans become addicted to poisons designed to deter pests?
Perhaps because, as the authors of a recent study suggest, the motor neurons in insects evolved into a reward system in the brains of humans, adding a another dimension, beside excitability, to the effects of these stimulants: reward.
So it is by evolution’s ingenious co-opting of all that has gone before that we humans become addicted to deterrents aimed at creatures with whom we last shared a common ancestor nearly half a billion years ago.
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