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Do Honeybees Defy Dinosaur Extinction Theories?
neutron_p writes "The humble tropical honeybee may challenge the idea that a post-asteroid impact "nuclear winter" was a big player in the decimation of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Somehow the tropical honeybee, Cretotrigona prisca, survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event, despite what many researchers believe was a years-long period of darkness and frigid temperatures caused by sunlight-blocking dust and smoke from the asteroid impact at Chicxulub."
This new finding is based on the optimal temperature range for honeybees and their food source - nectar-rich flowering plants (which share the same optimal temperature range), to survive.
However if your living environment has just been destroyed by a meteor, wouldn't these creatures just "make-do" with less-ideal conditions, maybe in a smaller population?
Honeybees are so much smaller than dinosaurs, I don't think we can really compare their adapting speed, ability and mobility.
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I thought it was pretty well-established that the dinosaurs were already in decline by the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago.
/. is there's no shortage of people who'll try to explain this...)
It's known that many species were already extinct by then, and there was a large asteroid impact around that time, causing some sort of a climate change that finished them off.
Based on the fact that many many smaller animals (rodents, birds, reptiles, amphibians) survived the event, I don't understand why it's confusing that insects (even tropical insects) survived as well. Can someone explain this, please?
(One of the great things about
Last I checked you could pop a bee into the freezer for a few days and it will recover after you thaw it. Could this not explain how insects and other simple life forms survived the climet change caused by such an impact?
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No, the dance theory has to do with how a forager bee tells the rest of the workers precicely where the food is that he found. The legend goes that he first spins one way X times to denote the direction, then the other way X times to denote the distance.
Plenty of people are sceptical of this, and alternate theories include the one that the other bees just follow the forager by his scent - like a line of ants in the sky.
I have seen bees spin around and do this dance while they flap their wings. Every time I'd smoke them they'd all start doing it (to fan the smoke from the hive). That's how smoke "pacifies" bees, they go into "holy shit forget that guy whos tryin to take our honey, this place is on fire!" mode.
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