A conscript hugs a girl as he says goodbye to family members at a local railway station during departure for the garrisons, in Sevastopol, Crimea on November 9, 2022. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)

People shop at a market ahead of the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong on February 6, 2024 ahead of the Lunar New Year of the Dragon which falls on February 10. (Photo by Peter Parks/AFP Photo)

A 71-day-old male Kalimantan orangutan, a critically endangered species, born in the zoo but neglected by its 9-year-old mother Shakila, is held by an animal care taker at Bandung Zoological Gardens in Bandung, West Java on February 21, 2025. (Photo by Timur Matahari/AFP Photo)

Seven-year-old Ruby Macis explores the stunning sunflower field at Balgone Estate, East Lothian, UK on August 6 2024, which prepares to open to the public for the second year this week with quarter of a million sunflowers over seven acres. (Photo by South West News Service)

A child sits in a walkway at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, May 22, 2025. (Photo by Odelyn Joseph/AP Photo)

A woman wearing traditional clothes reacts as men throw water at her during a traditional Easter celebration in Holloko, Hungary on April 10, 2023. (Photo by Bernadett Szabo/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.

Hundreds of people from a range of NGOs and campaign groups protest to demand the immediate restoration of nature at DEFRA – Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs on September 28, 2023 in London, England. The 2023 State of Nature Report revealed that approximately one in six species in Great Britain, including turtle doves and hazel dormice, are at risk of extinction, citing climate change, intensive farming, and pollution as major threats, with a 19% average decline in monitored plant and animal populations since 1970. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)