A Thai veterinarian sterilizes a monkey in a bid to control the birth rate of the monkey population in Hua Hin city, Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, Thailand, 15 July 2017. (Photo by Narong Sangnak/EPA/EFE)

In this December 8, 2020 file photo, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro playfully sprays a journalist with disinfectant as he exits a press conference at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Attorneys for the cash-strapped government blame the impact of U.S. sanctions for its inability to make an initial $18 million down payment to the United Nations for doses of the U.N.-supplied vaccines, whose deadline has already passed. (Photo by Matias Delacroix/AP Photo/File)

A group of women dance in a pool in Callao, Peru, Sunday, February 22, 2015. One of centers for the front-doorstep, pool-party phenomenon is Lima's port city of Callao. People hold parties in them and sometimes entire blocks chip in to buy a pool, which can be had in local department stores for a bit over $100. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)

A hot-air balloon flies over Metropolitan Park during the International Hot-Air Balloon Festival in Leon, state of Guanajuato, Mexico, on November 16, 2024. (Photo by Henry Romero/Reuters)

Visitors observe the sculpture “That Girl” by U.S. artist Paul McCarthy, at the Hyperrealist Sculpture 1973-2016 exhibition in the Museum of Bellas Artes in Bilbao, northern Spain, July 27, 2016. (Photo by Vincent West/Reuters)

Coca growers chew coca leaves during a celebration for the reincorporation of Bolivia to the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs in La Paz on January 14, 2013. “The coca leaf is not any more seen as cocaine (...), it is a victory of our identity” said Bolivian President Evo Morales. (Photo by Jorge Bernal/AFP Photo)

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 jogger runs on the bank of Donaukanal channel in central Vienna, Austria, September 5, 2016. (Photo by Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters)