Bee Perception

Re “Busy, and Smart Too,” editorial, Aug. 18: The finding on bee perception reported in your editorial certainly didn’t put a ding in my ego. Perception--the ability to integrate sensory data into percepts--is not what distinguishes man from the lower animals; the use of reason does. This is why Aristotle defined man as “the rational animal.”

Reason entails the use of concepts, products of the process of abstraction that allow us to grasp similarities and differences far beyond the mental capacity of even the best-trained chimpanzee, let alone bee. It is this uniquely human rational capacity that enables you to write an editorial, however misguided, about bee perception, whereas the bees are manifestly unable to produce a similar essay about human perception.

RON M. KAGAN