Scientists turn bees into cokeheads
Francis Sedgemore, Friday 2 January 2009 at 13:32 UTC
Keen to find out whether cocaine has as devastating effect on honeybee society as it does on human communities, researchers in Australia and the US have been feeding the Bolivian marching powder to bees and monitoring its effects.
Macquarie University ethologist Andrew Barron and his colleagues found that cocaine stimulates bees’ reward centres, and quickly leads to dependency and withdrawal symptoms when withheld. The researchers conclude that bees are as susceptible as humans to cocaine’s allure, and the plan now is to identify the neural pathways targeted by the drug. The overall aim is, they say, to find out more about the mechanisms involved in human addiction.
Now I’m sure it’s all very interesting, but I cannot help wondering about the ethics of turning bees into drug fiends in the cause of scientific understanding. Especially when the animals in question have a few not insignificant differences to humans in terms of basic physiology. I understand that there are research studies of addiction that focus on Homo sapiens in all its glory and depravity, so how much relevant information can scientists hope to gather from Apis mellifera? Surely addiction is about more than the biochemical disruption of neuromodulator systems.
Feed the writer! 
Friday 2 January 2009 at 22:34 UTC
I’d imagine there’d be much lower ethical standards for invertebrates, providing an immediate attraction. Any conclusions would be unlikely to extrapolated directly to human behaviour, but could either form the basis of further studies or simply practice in research studies (Dr. Barron appears to be an undergrad co-ordinator).
I may be entirely wrong, and they may just sadists who hate bees.
Friday 2 January 2009 at 22:47 UTC
It just seems a bit odd. That is, here we have a group of ethologists – i.e., animal behaviourists – focusing very closely on biochemical interactions, when we know already (don’t we?) that addiction is a multi-faceted thing, and studying it requires more of a systems approach.
Saturday 3 January 2009 at 10:24 UTC
Ahh but to use a systems approach you need to understand as much as possible the basic biochemistry and cell biology so you can improve the predictive value of your models.
I assume the bees were used as a model because the pathways and proteins in the bee neurons are not that different from human ones*. The structure of the bee brain may well be massively different from that of the human brain but the underlying chemistry and cell types are not entirely dissimilar (bees have GABA neurons). So while these bee experiments can tell us nothing about the macro aspects of human behaviour influenced by cocaine but they have some value from a biochemical/cell biology perspective.
*from the perspective of a cell biologist
Saturday 3 January 2009 at 13:46 UTC
“Ahh but to use a systems approach you need to understand as much as possible the basic biochemistry and cell biology so you can improve the predictive value of your models.”
My dear Commander K – This is of course true; reductionist and systems approaches are entirely complementary. But it’s the way that the authors argue their case which bothers me, and, although I’m a physicist rather than a biologist, and therefore hesitant to make a big deal out of this, I have my doubts about the value of this study when there are others that focus on human reactions to drugs.
On a more flippant note, Barron et al. state that cocaine doesn’t affect bees’ motor functions. If you’ve ever been in the company of human cokeheads, then you’ll understand that this doesn’t hold for our species. Especially in the gob department.
Friday 9 January 2009 at 15:39 UTC
Well there is a tendency amongst those of us grubbing around in the lower phyla to view metazoans as a tube with an orifice at each end and a differing amount of wiggly bits in between but other than that more or less the same. That said Dr Barron is unfortunately anthropomorphising his charges a little bit too much in this video clip. I’m not sure if this is just a scientist sexing up his work for the cameras or if the man really does see human society reflected in his hives.
I think you’re probably right in arguing that this is science in the vein of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we did this……?’ rather than having any grand objective of reducing human misery.
Friday 9 January 2009 at 16:32 UTC
CK – that link points to a sub-page of this one – i.e., on my website, to which you do not have an upload facility.
Friday 9 January 2009 at 17:04 UTC
Shite, an copy and pasting error, it should be
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2009/jan/09/bees-cocaine
at least I didn’t link to porn.
Friday 9 January 2009 at 17:41 UTC
I’ll give Barron the benefit of doubt on his video, CK. It does look like “sexing up” for the cameras, as you put it.