Well that depends on your definition of a hive mind, bees are not telepathically linked, but they can communicate over long distances through scent. Queen bees have a certain scent that attracts all the workers to create a new hive, and worker bees will scent pollen filled flowers to attract others. They also communicate in closer range through ‘dance’ like movements.
Honey bees fly from their colony looking for nectar and pollen. When they are successful in locating good food supplies, they then return to their hive and performs a dance on the honeycomb. At first, the bee walks a straight line while shaking its abdomen vigorously. The bee also makes a buzzing sound with its wings. The speed and distance of the movement conveys the distance of where the food source is so other bees can find it. Communicating the path to follow is more complex because the bee performing the waggle dance talk will align their body in the exact direction of where the food is in accordance with the sun. The dance pattern looks like a figure-eight, as the honey bee keeps repeating the straight part of the movement every time it circles back to the center area again.
An insite to the different roles in Honey bees, also the mutualism in a working hive. –CH
Eusociality:
Organisms that operate in a ‘cooperative brood’. Bees, ants and termites are ‘eusocial’. It is considered the “the highest level of organization of animal sociality”, where labour is distributed and offspring is raised by a colony rather than individual parent. Eusociality typically involves ‘endogomy’ which is the practise of only marrying/mating with others of the same race. Species in a eusocial group do not stray from their group to breed with individuals from beyond their group. Naked mole rats are a mammal example of animals that live in eusocial groups, they too have a queen who is primarily responsible for reproduction, but it means that the creatures are quite inbred. To reduce inbreeding, they will occasionally establish new colonies with outsiders.
Soft Sci-Fi
for example: anthropology, sociology, psychology.. Social science, topics that are considered to be less mechanical, bio, engineer related, “softer” Science Fiction.
Anthropological Sci Fi
The anthropologist Leon E. Stover says of science fiction’s relationship to anthropology: “Anthropological science fiction enjoys the philosophical luxury of providing answers to the question “What is man?” while anthropology the science is still learning how to frame it”, although this subgenera was warned to be too broad to have a single definition.
Lost Races, Utopian,
Speculative evolution Speculative evolution, also called speculative biology and speculative zoology, is a genre of speculative fiction and an artistic movement, focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life. Works incorporating speculative evolution may have entirely conceptual species that evolve on a planet other than Earth, or they may be an alternate history focused on an alternate evolution of terrestrial life. With a strong connection to and basis in science, particularly biology, speculative evolution is often considered hard science fiction. Speculative biology and creature concepts are also a prevalent subject in concept art.
Basis in biology and palaeontology, King Kong:Skull island
In the novel Evolution by Stephen Baxter, some chapters are dedicated to the description of futuristic animals, including the posthumans. In various chapters of the book we see elements of speculative evolution. These are intelligent Ornitholestes dinosaurs, Cenozoic dinosaurs and other primitive inhabitants of Antarctica, futuristic descendants of pigs, goats, rats, rabbits and humans, and symbiosis between barometz tree and posthumans of New Pangea 500 MY in the future.
Cloverfield (2008) centered around a giant semiaquatic monster, Clover. The central monster was designed with its habitat (the deep ocean) in mind, and its traits, except for its size, were inspired by biological plausibility.[15]
The 2009 film Avatar constructed a fictional biosphere full of original, speculative alien species. James Cameron hired a team of experts to ensure that the lifeforms were scientifically plausible.[16][17] The creatures of the movie took inspiration from Earth species as diverse as pterosaurs, microraptors, great white sharks, and panthers, and combined their traits to create an alien world.[18]
Speculative biology and the future evolution of the human species has also become a significant issue in bio art.
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E.Lily Yu
This is one of those great stories that works both as a metaphor (for colonialism, for what happens when one nation makes another a “client state”) but also as a straight-up piece of speculative biology — a group of wasps conquer a group of bees, and some of the highly educated wasps think that they can take some of the bee offspring and turn them into scholars. But the bee colony also has to work way harder to service the wasps’ needs as well as its own. And this arrangement has vastly unpredictable results, for both sides. There are huge lessons for human societies here, but also something irreduceably alien.
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E.Lily Yu
Metaphor for colonialism, for what happens when a nation makes another a client state.
short story p1short story p2short story p3
!!Group Work Key things!!
Week 3 work includes the phase 2 and 3 in the brief. Also during research we need to do so with an “Alien” lens/interest. We need to have a researched platform by next class for concepts to form
Key topics to research in depth; Group assigned tasks
Go through the same research method as Hive mind with these Stared key words/theme “Brood Parasite, Mimicry”, “Client State”, “Colonialism” and “Ecofiction” (check team member name)visualising the world/realm of 2 species in the story “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E.Lily Yu”
and etc Eurasian reed warbler raising a common cuckoo bird.
Avian brood parasites are specialists which parasitize only a single host species or a small group of closely related host species.The mechanisms of host selection by female cuckoos are somewhat unclear, though several hypotheses have been suggested in attempt to explain the choice. These include genetic inheritance of host preference, host imprinting on young birds, returning to place of birth and subsequently choosing a host randomly (“natal philopatry”), choice based on preferred nest site (nest-site hypothesis), and choice based on preferred habitat (habitat-selection hypothesis). Of these hypotheses the nest-site selection and habitat selection have been most supported by experimental analysis.
Adaptations for parasitism
Among specialist avian brood parasites, mimetic eggs are a nearly universal adaptation. There is even some evidence that the generalist brown-headed cowbird may have evolved an egg coloration mimicking a number of their hosts.
“Mafia hypothesis”
There is a question as to why the majority of the hosts of brood parasites care for the nestlings of their parasites. Not only do these brood parasites usually differ significantly in size and appearance, but it is also highly probable that they reduce the reproductive success of their hosts. The “mafia hypothesis” evolved through studies in an attempt to answer this question. This hypothesis revolves around host manipulations induced by behaviors of the brood parasite. Upon the detection and rejection of a brood parasite’s egg, the host’s nest is depredated upon, its nest destroyed and nestlings injured or killed. This threatening response indirectly enhances selective pressures favoring aggressive parasite behavior that may result in positive feedback between mafia-like parasites and compliant host behaviours
Eco-fiction: which is basically any form of story that is about the environment, all there is is that the story is told from a perspective other then a human perspective, about how the environment being intrinsically connected to the creature (pray mantis). So it could be a Sci-Fi narrative; alien the specie living in space that’s kind of colonised by something ells (Avatar). Most Sci-Fi eco fiction narratives.
If issue is: people don’t have enough time to stop, rest, and regenerate.
Research: the mechanics of what impact this issue is, aline with some sort of context:
e.g. disconnection with nature, nature deficit disorder DEFINE THE ISSUE
the issue is Not the outcome (etc obiesity), find the problem (what has changed in the world we lived in in last 20 years? nature deficit disorder, the underlining issue. And anxiety issues).
these are the key words, would be nice to aim to have enough context on these words e.g. Hive mind research. I will carry on Brood parasite and Client State, we can all chip in especially Ecofiction. will have to keep each other posted to avoid overlap and more productive/extensive researchReminds me of Movie Alien (bit of a Parasite move)
Alien-ic Project 