Takeoka Chisaka, Hiroshima, Japan. “One morning in August 1945, I was walking home from the night shift at a factory in Hiroshima. As I reached my door, there was a huge explosion. When I came to, my head was bleeding and I had been blasted 30m away. The atomic bomb had detonated. When I found my mother, her eyes were badly burned. A doctor said they had to come out, but he didn’t have the proper tools so used a knife instead. It was hellish. I became a peace-worker after the war. In the 1960s, at a meeting at the UN, I met one of the people who created the atomic bomb. He apologised”. (Photo and caption by Sasha Maslov)

Shamekh Bluwi, an architect and fashion illustrator based in Amman, Jordan, creates beautiful paper cut-outs with women whose dresses become whatever you hold them up against. Besides being beautiful fashion drawings, they also seem like an excellent tool for coming up with inspiration for new fashion designs; simply hold up one of his drawings and see what sort of architectural lines, repeating patterns or images the women in his elegant cutouts would look good in.

Chief priest Gbenga Saala raises a cutlass to kill a dog during an annual prayer and sacrifice celebration of the iron god Ogun in Abuja, Nigeria, June 23, 2015. Every year worshippers offer a dog as sacrifice to Ogun, a traditional Nigerian deity, in hope of an auspicious year ahead. Taxi drivers, blacksmiths, panel beaters and mechanics – trades that depend on metal for their livelihood – pay homage to Ogun, led by high priest Gbenga Saala. As part of the ceremony, the priest pours the dog’s blood on symbols of these workers’ trade: keys, spanners and other tools piled up in a metal barrel. (Photo by Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

Christian Balderosdasco, 31, is being pulled up a mud pit after diving for 3 hours to look for gold on March 22, 2017 in Paracale, Philippines. Apart from tunneling and sifting sand, locals dive down murky swamps with the aid of a compressor with air flowing in a small tube for breathing, as they blindly swim under the mud for up to four hours to look for tiny rocks containing gold particles. For decades, local residents at Paracale town work in hazardous conditions scavenging under the earth and diving into tunnels filled with mud using only makeshift tools to mine for gold, often placing their health and lives at risk. (Photo by Jes Aznar/Getty Images)

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin's aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived, chopping wood to heat the house and making their own clothes. Sablin's book of photographs, “Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila”, is published by Duke University Press. Here: “Two-Handed Saw, 2014”. (Photo by Nadia Sablin)

“Himalayan Dog”. This dog just appeared out of nowhere and followed us for an entire week during our trekking trip in the Himalayan outback. He always used to sleep in front of our tent and guarded us in the nights. When I decided to get up at 4 a.m. to climb the next 5000 m peak for sunrise he accompanied me as well. On the top he was sitting for the entire 30 minutes on this place looking straight into the countryside. Photo location: Ladakh, India. (Photo and caption by Sebastian Wahlhuetter/National Geographic Photo Contest)

Once upon a time a myth was born that insects, unlike animals, are just a machines that not capable of learning and survive only based on their instincts. That myth has become the widespread opinion. Of course, this opinion is indeed erroneous, like many other widespread opinions. Let us try to find out which part is a myth and which part is true.