Horror for Newbies

The capacities of insect brains

*I hope this insect-brain researcher is off his rocker, because I really don't want to confront a new paradigm where a mosquito is stalking me with as much smarts as a hungry alleycat.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117124009.htm

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Research repeatedly shows how insects are capable of some intelligent behaviours scientists previously thought was unique to larger animals. Honeybees, for example, can count, categorise similar objects like dogs or human faces, understand 'same'...

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Published on November 19, 2009 03:35
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message 1: by Peter (new)
Nov 25, 2009 07:34AM

Peter From what I've read, it's not the size of the brain per se, but the ratio of brain weight to total body weight. This ratio is higher in cetaceans such as dolphins and killer whales, which seems to mean among many things, that these creatures, like humans, have much more brain and computing power than they seem to need. As far as I know, no one knows what this so-called extra brain mass is used for. One marine biologist has theorized that whales use this mass to memorize every inch of the ocean floor (can you imagine what humans might do with this information?), others think that it's related to language. Such a language would be ancient, alien, and rich in scope. As for insects, who cares? I wonder if these "intellegent behaviors" are simply instinctual, what they need to do to survive. Would you call a female preying mantis eating it's male mate after copulation "intellegent behavior"? The only reason an obnoxious, filthy, disease-ridden creature like the mosquito is allowed to exist is because it eats other insects that are even more obnoxious and filthier.
Ants, on the other hand are fascinating; their caste system and group-behavior, etc. fascinated Edmund O. Wilson enough to write a book that will be studied for centuries. Please excuse the exaggeration and facesiousness and mispelling in this reply; I'm not a scientist, just an interested observer.


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