A mahout (a person who rides an elephant) decorates his elephant using chalk while preparing for the Elephant Festival at Sauraha in Chitwan, south of Kathmandu, December 26, 2014. Elephants and mahouts from Chitwan will participate in the Elephant festival, which involves elephant races, elephants playing an exhibition soccer match and taking part in various other sporting activities. The event will start from 26 December and will end on 30 December, 2014. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders entertain the crowds during a match against Washington Football Team at AT&T Stadium on December 26, 2021 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Tim Heitman/USA TODAY Sports)

A stray cat walks in front of a ballot box at a polling station for Turkish citizens living abroad, as part of the second round of the Turkish presidential election, at the Turkish Embassy in Cairo, Egypt on May 22, 2023. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Ethnic Cham Muslim people pass the time near their boats on banks of Mekong river in Phnom Penh July 29, 2013. About 100 ethnic Cham families, made up of nomads and fishermen without houses or land who arrived at the Cambodian capital in search of better lives, live on their small boats on a peninsula where the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers meet, just opposite the city's centre. The community has been forced to move several times from their locations in Phnom Penh as the land becomes more valuable. They fear that their current home, just behind a new luxurious hotel under construction at the Chroy Changva district is only temporary and that they would have to move again soon. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A dog jumps into a swimming pool to retrieve a ball during the Chatsworth House Country Fair near Edensor, Britain on August 31, 2018. (Photo by Darren Staples/Reuters)

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.

A Russian-made rifle, carried by this woman when she was captured in Nearby Brush, is slung around her neck by South Vietnamese soldiers before they began their interrogation of her as Viet Cong suspect near AP La Ghi in Vietnam, August 25, 1965. The girl behind the woman, also was captured in the brush. (Photo by AP Photo)

A lion cub wakes in the morning sun at the Zimanga private game reserve in South Africa on April 9, 2022. (Photo by Calvin Kotze/Animal News Agency)