An Observation of Human-Like Intellect in Insect Life

An Observation of Human-Like Intellect in Insect Life: The Psychology of Insect Brains

The fascination with alien-like appearances of insects has led to my observing various insects in their natural environments since 1960. While entomological-based aspects of insects predominantly focus on insectile physiologies and their biochemical typologies, one area related to insect life that is deficient in the research of insect life is an inquiry into possible common attributes it has with the human life forms occupying the planet.

The possibility that insects and humans have unexpected traits in common suggests that this a posteriori reasoning is produced from emerging basic observations and generic facts, e.g., that each species possess brains and beating hearts as well as the primary instincts needed to promote its survival. Inferences that consider associating any degree of cognitive potential in relation to theories about insect forms having human-like cognition, however, are likely to be disregarded. The widely accepted neuro-psychological concept describing the reptilian, or limbic, brain in the human cerebral structure was confirmed through actual bio-physiology study and not a de factor termination. Consequently, any interpretations of isolated incidents regarding insect responses to directly observed situations have to source from a presumption that human responses compare to them in similar theoretically developed conditions. The lack of a conditional principle of explanation for serving as a balancing check point is an obvious confounding feature to the inquiry into parallels between human and insect perception processes.

The raw data acquired from my reflections on factual components is related to perplexing, unplanned observations of specific insect activity. The inference of human-like cognitive responses of insects comes from direct observations and leads to the synthetical proposition that insectile brains may have higher cortex capacity than is presently widely believed. Because the proposition is based on reflections of events that were spontaneously experienced, a lack of coherence was found to emerge and stimulated moving the perplexing data into a more comprehensive, meaningful whole. This was accomplished by classifying three observed events according to their insect groups, ants and spiders.

One of these incidents was related to exhibition of apparent confusion by an ant which created threads to a perplexing idea that ran counter to its earlier sensation of comedic relief. Watching a television that had an antenna called “rabbit ears” with a friend had initially caused laughter when a small ant climbed up and ran back down the antenna several times before ascending to its highest point, hesitating for a brief moment, then jumping. The impression of deliberation of thought in an insect was salient to our mutual awareness of the event and further reflections of it. A separate incident that raised questions about whether upper cognitive capacities exist in insects involved observed interactions between two ants rolling a perfectly round crumb ball between them (on a sidewalk at a school where I was attending classes). Their activity appeared unusual to me such that I stopped to watch their progress. I saw them pausing at certain intervals while one ant consistently went over to the other ant and appeared to use signals with its antennae before returning to its side of the ball when their rolling would continue. Out of curiosity, I reached out a finger and stopped the ball. I compare the behavior I witnessed as purely panic driven. One ant ran to the other, ran to the top of the ball in a frenzied circle, ran back to the other ant and ran away. The other ant remained with the ball and attempted to finish moving it itself. The overall impression of the incident was that these ants had exhibited characteristics that appeared to hold similar aspects with typically predictable human cognitive responses. Another insect event involved seeing a mother spider throw a fine skein of silk over her single, surviving baby to lift it up onto her back before my broom came over it. Observing her reaction to my offense suggested a potential for connecting to a type of awareness that basic crude defense mechanisms are not capable of generating.

Revisiting my reflections of witnessed events precipitated an inductive moving of particular details towards a universal, connected view for finding a relatively binding principle that could interpret these isolated details into a better constructed framework. Inasmuch as establishing a scale that can objectively measure insect cognitive response in a testable environment is improbable, it is still in the nature of scientifically oriented questions to at least introduce it as a novel concept. The prospect of having access to a rival hypothesis empirically opposing an implication of the existence of thought in insects is substantially doubtful regarding universal human notions about them. Nonetheless, relaying accounts of the isolated events that produced cognitive-like responses in insects supports an interesting premise for future discussion.