A tiny pufferfish, with a small size brain, creating intricate "crop circles" on the seabed using only its fin, cleaning all out the debris on the sand structure, decorating its construction, and planning to attract a mate.
Ants, another small creatures with very small brains, creating a super complex colony complete with air-conditioning, waste disposal and family hierarchies.
A spider, another creature with a small brain, constructing a very intricate web pattern
Wasp, another being with a small brain, building complex almost perfect patterns of hexagonal nests, with the ability to count the number of nest for each offsprings.
Bird brain means stupid? Think again after watching this bird sewing its nest.
Since I was a kid I have been playing with these cute tiny bugs. What fascinate me about these insects, either called sow bugs or pill bugs, was they can be found everywhere. Sometimes I even thought them as the Holy Grail of Evolution because they can be found in all parts of the world as well. I encountered them in Alaska, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, North and South Americas.
Now, are all these insects have intelligent brains? Are they aware of themselves? Do they think? In psychology, the awareness of one’s own ability to think is called metacognition. It is thought to reside on a region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex that stores many cognitive functions like planning and reasoning. It is believed to be the common factor that distinguishes humans from other species.
If the prefrontal cortex permits metacognition, then species that demonstrate metacognition are self-aware and have the ability to think. However, simply identifying which species exhibit self-aware behavior has been proven to be tricky because no reliable behavioral tests for the trait exist.
In 1970 Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., of the University at Albany, developed the “mirror test” to assess metacognition in chimpanzees. However, some of the chimps failed to recognize themselves thus causing certain scientists to consider the test unreliable.
"There are no such things as problems;
problems only exist because of laziness."
~ Joey Lawsin
problems only exist because of laziness."
~ Joey Lawsin
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NOTICE: Articles on this site are composed on random
thoughts. The transcript may not be in its final form. It maybe
edited, updated or even revised in the future based on the outcomes of the author's experiments.
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Patent Pending. 2000 © ®
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