Non-Human Intelligence on Earth: The Honey Bee

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/090827-seti-bees-navigation.html

"Bee Celestial Navigation and Non-Human Intelligence"

What could the study of honey bees possibly have to do with the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence? Well, bees are a species on our very own planet which have the three main requirements for producing extraterrestrail communications. These are a communication system, advanced tool use, and astronomy; bees can demonstrate non-human skills in all three.

Bees demonstrate astronomy by polarizing light to see the Sun on a cloudy day, by knowing where the Sun is even after it sets and therefore can still forage during a full moon, and how they can understand landscape as a map and don't need to retrace the same route back to the hive which they took to leave.

Bees also have been discovered to demonstrate communication. To date, bees are in fact the only other species that have been shown to communicate with symbolic language--in this case through dance--which allows them to 'talk' about something that is not present. So far we know of three languages bees use: the DVAV Dance for discussing hive politics, the Round Dance which tells the other bees to go out and sniff around for the source of pollen that is close, and the Waggle Dance that is done when nectar is discovered far away and the bee discusses with the hive where to go.

There was even a university study done in which bees exhibited the ability to correctly locate where nectar was going to be placed next, which shows they can do math (to determine how far away the nectar location moved each day) and imagination (the ability to imagine the future of where the nectar would be outside the present). Clearly, bees are an extremely intelligent species coexisting and effectually perpetuating human life on this planet (without bees humans would only last 3 or 4 years as our food supply would disappear). All in all, we will be more prepared when looking for intelligent life on other planets when we learn more from bees and other species on Earth.