A protester reacts outside New Zealand's parliament during a demonstration against a proposed law that would redefine the country's founding agreement between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown, in Wellington Tuesday, November 19, 2024. (Photo by Mark Tantrum/AP Photo)

A model presents a creation by Isabel Japon during the Simof 2025 (International Flamenco Fashion Show) in Seville on January 31, 2025. (Photo by Cristina Quicler/AFP Photo)

A Sri Lankan leopard is pictured at a zoo in Dehiwala near Colombo on March 3, 2016, on World Wildlife Day. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)

Three members of English pop group The Tremeloes; Chip Hawkes, Alan Blakley and Dave Munden, kissing their brides; Carol Dilworth, Lyn Stevens and Andree Wittenberg, in Trafalgar Square, London. (Photo by Wesley/Getty Images). 1967

A painting of a Trabant car bursting through a wall in post unification Berlin, August 1993. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

“Show Time”. It's a normal behavior of mantis. They're doing defence. When they're afraid of; raising their arms and spreading their wings. They looks like smiling dancer. Photo location: Nicosia, Cyprus. (Photo and caption by Hasan Baglar/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.

Elderly women wait for customers as they sell their self-made food products at a street market, with a graffiti depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin on the wall of a house seen in the background, in the town of Kashira, outside Moscow, Russia on October 10, 2017. (Photo by Andrey Volkov/Reuters)