Carol Grant Gould

The insect mind: Physics or metaphysics?

When we attempt to infer from an animal’s overt behavior whether its brain might be thinking or merely computing, a variety of intuitively suggestive lines of evidence become unreliable. Many behavioral traits such as adaptive behavior, behavioral variability, complexity, flexibility (including learning), and even the phenomenon of culture can be — and in insects at least have been proven to be — the results of genetic programming. The demonstrated effects of programming can be so intricate and subtle that even what seems to be insight or creativity must be suspect. A versatile and more reliable guide to the inner workings of minds is communication. Experimental manipulations of signals can show, through their effects on the behavior of the receiver, how the incoming information is being processed. This line of inquiry has laid open much of the insect mind, particularly that of the honey bee, but no compelling evidence for awareness has emerged. Instead, insects stand more than ever as testaments to the power of blind behavioral programming, and as such remind us to be wary of attributing to vertebrates anything more than larger, more interesting on-board computers.