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.

Men wear masks as they sit in the metro in Prague, Czech Republic, 17 March 2020. According to media reports, the Czech government decided to impose a two-week quarantine in the country on the evening of 15 March, and ban all international travel from 16 March 2020. Currently 383 cases of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease, have been officially confirmed in Czech Republic. (Photo by Martin Divisek/EPA/EFE)

Undated BBC handout photo of a female two-coloured Mason Bee carrying a dried grass stalk back to her snail-shell nest on the British Isles in the latest episode of Sir David Attenborough's Wild Isles series. Issue date: Sunday March 26, 2023. (Photo by John Walters/Silverback Films/BBC/PA Wire)

These tiny little sugar gliders are lucky to be alive after surviving a cat attack that killed their mother. Somehow the youngsters, who were just a few days old at the time, and the size of jellybeans, survived and were rushed to the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital in Queensland, Australia. (Photo by Adam Head/Newspix/REX Features)

Brian Skerry can be called many things – explorer, journalist, conservation advocate – but he is first and foremost a photographer. His journeys to capture amazing underwater photographs have taken him across the world’s oceans. Photo: This Bahamian oceanic whitetip shark, known for the distinctive coloring on its white-tipped, rounded extremities, is part of a globally threatened species due to overfishing demands, primarily for its fins. (Photo by Brian Skerry)

The little new born wombat baby APARI sitting in its mothers pouch at the zoo in Duisburg, Germany, Thursday, March 29, 2018. Wombat mother TINSEL once was found in the pouch of its dead mother on a street in Australia and was raised by zookeepers before she came to Germany. The zoo tried for 40 years in vain to breed a wombat, until APARI was born as the first one last week. (Photo by Martin Meissner/AP Photo)

Hamish the polar bear tries out his new enclosure at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park at Branton, Doncaster on November 6, 2020, after moving from the Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland. Hamish was the first polar bear to be born in the UK. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Wire Press Association)