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Food makes me feel like dancing

By Greg Kline
Sunday January 28, 2007

A chemical that works something like cocaine might prompt foraging honey bees to feel rewarded by "dancing" to communicate information about a found food source to the hive, rather than taking their solitary pleasure in gorging themselves on that food.

University of Illinois researchers who uncovered the link between bee dancing and octopamine think the finding shows nature exploiting an existing brain mechanism to produce social behavior, suggesting "there is rhyme and reason in social evolution," UI entomology Professor Gene Robinson said recently.

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