This is a portion of the first color 360-degree panorama from NASA's Curiosity rover, made up of thumbnails, which are small copies of higher-resolution images. The mission's destination, a mountain at the center of Gale Crater called Mount Sharp, can be seen in the distance, to the left, beginning to rise up. The mountain's summit will be imaged later. (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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.

Girls during a class at the Teire Irish dance school in Moscow, Russia on March 15, 2019. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/TASS)

A conscript hugs a girl as he says goodbye to family members at a local railway station during departure for the garrisons, in Sevastopol, Crimea on November 9, 2022. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

This photograph, taken on September 28, 2019, shows an Erythrina Abyssinica planted in a pasture on Ferme Espoir, owned by former President Joseph Kabila, in Masisi territory, northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Photo by Alexis Huguet/AFP Photo)

People shop at a market ahead of the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong on February 6, 2024 ahead of the Lunar New Year of the Dragon which falls on February 10. (Photo by Peter Parks/AFP Photo)

A 71-day-old male Kalimantan orangutan, a critically endangered species, born in the zoo but neglected by its 9-year-old mother Shakila, is held by an animal care taker at Bandung Zoological Gardens in Bandung, West Java on February 21, 2025. (Photo by Timur Matahari/AFP Photo)

Seven-year-old Ruby Macis explores the stunning sunflower field at Balgone Estate, East Lothian, UK on August 6 2024, which prepares to open to the public for the second year this week with quarter of a million sunflowers over seven acres. (Photo by South West News Service)