How insects behave 



We ourselves do something rather Hke this when we walk through a 

 dense wood, or over an open space with no landmarks. Try crossing 

 afoot one of the southwest deserts, the Rocky Mountains, or a dense 

 bog or forested area of our northern states without a compass, and you 

 will find that you are dependent on a very primitive 'sense of direction' 

 not far removed from a 'Hght-compass reaction'. It might be said 

 that anyone getting himself into such a situation was not being very 

 intelligent, but it would not be safe to say that he had no intelligence 

 at all. 



It seems, therefore, that the elaborate experiments that have been 

 done on the behaviour of bees and ants do not in themselves prove that 

 these insects have no inteUigence. In fact the complicated code that the 

 dance of the bees is said to represent is so involved that it would seem 

 that only the highest intelligence could be expected to be able to operate 

 it, with sufficient accuracy. It would need less intelligence for the bee 

 to go out and look for food itself. 



The main reason for thinking that insects cannot have much true 

 intelligence is the fact that their nervous system is so much smaller than 

 our own, and apparently so much simpler. Intelligent behaviour would 

 seem to need more nerves and nerve-junctions than they have, so that 

 memories and impressions of past events could be stored away, and 

 brought out on the right occasions to influence future behaviour. 



Nevertheless the behaviour of insects, particularly of social insects, 

 covers many actions that we ourselves would perform dehberately, with 

 a conscious purpose in mind. There is even one wasp {Sphex) that is 

 said to pick up a stone and use it to ram down the covering of its 

 burrow, and thus takes its place alongside primitive man as a user of 

 tools. 



It remains to be seen whether we shall have to give the insects credit 

 for more intelligence than we thought, or whether we shall have to 

 look upon more of our own behaviour as being instinctive rather than 

 purposeful. 



109 



