A Manipuri woman sells smoked and dry fish in Ima market - the world's largest all women market – in Imphal city, Manipur state, 06 January 2016. The 150-year-old Ima Keithel or “Mothers's market” complex, which is run exclusively by women and was damaged in the 04 January 2016 earthquake, is returning back to normal. Nine deaths have been reported from in and around Imphal due to falling debris. Imphal has a population of some 270,000 and people were jolted from their sleep and ran out of their homes in panic when the earth shook 04 January, reports say. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)

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.

An airplane is silhouetted at sunrise, seen from the suburb of Saint-Cloud, near Paris, France, 08 December 2016. Paris is undergoing a third day pollution spike, prompting the city to limit vehicle circulation. (Photo by Ian Langsdon/EPA)

Devotees push the chariot of Rato Machhindranath during the chariot festival at Bungamati in Lalitpur April 22, 2015. Rato Machhindranath is known as the god of rain and both Hindus and Buddhists worship Machhindranath for good rain to prevent drought during the rice harvest season. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Lily Nguyen of Jessop, from Maryland, leaps up in the air as a friend takes her photo in front of cherry blossoms which have reached their peak bloom, along the Tidal Basin, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2022. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

A tunnel with electric switches are seen in Josip Broz Tito's underground secret bunker (ARK) in Konjic, October 16, 2014. In the early 1950s, Josip Broz Tito, the late leader of the former Yugoslavia, ordered the building of the secret bunker, located 900 feet (270 m) underground and near the Bosnian town of Konjic, to safeguard the country's ruling class in case of a nuclear attack. Construction at the complex, which had a cost equivalent price tag of $4.6 billion, continued until 1979, the year before Tito died. (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

A racegoer reacts to picking a winner in the first race on the third day of the Royal Ascot horserace meeting, which is traditionally known as Ladies Day, at Ascot, England Thursday, June 17, 2021. (Photo by Alastair Grant/AP Photo)