Can an Insect Speak?

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Abstract
In this paper I investigate the scientific understanding of the honeybee dance language. I elucidate the implicit and explicit reasons why the honeybees’ communication system has been referred to as a ‘language’, and examine the ways this designation has entangled the themes of animal mind and human– animal continuity. I end with an investigation of a scientific controversy surrounding the honeybee dance language. I argue that this controversy was a battle over assumptions regarding insect capacities, and a willingness or unwillingness to abandon those assumptions in the face of a phenomenon that undermined them.