Does a bee know what is going on in its mind when it navigates its way to distant food sources and back to the hive (蜂房), using polarized sunlight and the tiny magnet it carries as a navigational aid? Or is the bee just a machine, unable to do its mathematics and dance its language in any other way? To use Donald GrifTm's term, does a bee have awareness, or to use a phrase I like better, can a bee think and imagine?
There is an experiment for this, or at least an observation, make long ago by Karl Von Frisch and more recently confirmed by James Gould at Princeton, Biologists who wish to study such things as bee navigation, language, and behavior. in general have to train their bees to fly from the hive to one or another special place. To do this, they begin by placing a source of sugar very close to the hive so that the bees (considered by their trainers to be very dumb beasts) can learn what the game is about. Then, at regular intervals, the dish or whatever is moved progressively father and farther from the hive in increments (增长) of about 25 percent at each move. Eventually, the target is being moved 100 feet or more at a jump, very far from the hive. Sooner or later, while this process is going on, the biologists shifting the dish of sugar will find the bees are out there waiting for them, precisely where the next position had been planned. This is an uncomfortable observation to make.
With what subject is the passage mainly concerned?
A.The bee, a social animal.
B.Navigational techniques of bees.
C.Testing the awareness of bees.
D.The bee hive, nature's candy shop.