It was refreshing to read a scientific paper with a little imagination and some guts. It reminded me of something in my high school biology. Long ago, researchers noticed that when a bee discovered a food source, other bees returned shortly after to the same food source. A curious scientists wondered just how this was possible. Surely, he thought, the bee with a brain the size of a pin head wasn't communicating. But in fact it was. With a dance that indicated the direction and distance relative to the sun, the bees share the info with other bees where the food source was to be found. This was discovered because a particular behavior was noticed and investigated. The bee dance is purely instinctual but language of sorts to an animal like a chimp or a bigfoot might be highly useful and adaptive also. Clearly the chimps brain is highly evolved for intelligence and some symbolic reasoning comes naturally to it. Chimps apparently learn how to mark trails because it is very useful in keeping the group together. Bigfoot seem to be more solitary than chimps based on the majority of reports though sometimes they are reportedly seen in small family groups. So what would bigfoot symbols be. I remember suggestions for a possible explanation for some of the torn trees is that it marks a territory. A particularly large tree broken at a height might indicate a big strong male already lives here.
Posted on Sep 30, 2002, 10:56 PM from IP address 65.188.64.221