An adult black-rumped flameback woodpecker is pestered by a pair of hungry chicks in Rajarhat, India in the second decade of May 2024. (Photo by Kalyan Acharya/Solent News)

Crews prepare hot air balloons for the Kentucky Derby Festival Great Balloonfest Rush Hour Race at Bowman Field on Friday, April 26, 2024. (Photo by Michael Clevenger/Courier Journal)

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 Airbus A380 aircraft prepares to land at Mumbai airport in this May 8, 2007 file photo. Sentiment at some of Asia's biggest firms deteriorated again in the fourth quarter, falling to a four-year low under the weight of concerns about slowing growth in China, the region's biggest economy, a Thomson Reuters/INSEAD survey showed. (Photo by Arko Datta/Reuters)

A worker roasts a row of pigs on bamboo poles at a roasting pit, in Manila, Philippines, December 21, 2020. (Photo by Lisa Marie David/Reuters)

Parade participants during the traditional “Masopust Carnival” festival on February 13, 2018 in Roztoky near Prague, Czech Republic. Known as Masopust (literally, “giving up meat”), the festival was traditionally the last chance to eat and drink in excess before the austerity of Lent. (Photo by Margot Buff/RFE/RL)

A performer blows fire during Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown, Binondo, Manila, Philippines, January 25, 2020. (Photo by Eloisa Lopez/Reuters)

A woman wearing a burka walks through a bird market as she holds her child, in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 8, 2022. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public – a sharp, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)