- Jul 23, 2014
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Insects are a particularly difficult group of animals to study for these traits (intelligence), because they’re just so different from us. Srour walked me through the basics of an insect’s brain, and holy god, they are so weird.
Insects are extremely modular creatures, not like us at all: the easiest way to understand an insect’s nervous system is that an insect has many different sub-brains in different parts of its body, which feed into and can be controlled by a slightly larger central brain but can actually also operate separately. The antennae of an insect has its own brain. So does the mouth, the eyes, and each leg. Even if the central brain of an insect stops working, its legs still have their own sub-brains, and can keep walking.
I Asked Leading Entomologists: ‘What’s The Smartest Bug In The World?’
Insects are extremely modular creatures, not like us at all: the easiest way to understand an insect’s nervous system is that an insect has many different sub-brains in different parts of its body, which feed into and can be controlled by a slightly larger central brain but can actually also operate separately. The antennae of an insect has its own brain. So does the mouth, the eyes, and each leg. Even if the central brain of an insect stops working, its legs still have their own sub-brains, and can keep walking.
I Asked Leading Entomologists: ‘What’s The Smartest Bug In The World?’
