Insect cognition Insect cognition Insect cognition describes the mental capacities and study of those capacities in insects. The field developed from comparative psychology where early studies focused more on animal behavior. Researchers have examined insect cognition in bees, fruit flies, and wasps. Research questions consist of experiments aimed to evaluate insects abilities with perception, attention, memory (wasp multiple nest), spatial cognition, tools use, problem solving, and concepts. Unlike in animal behavior the concept of group cognition plays a big part in insect studies. It is hypothesized some insect classes like ant and bees think with a group cognitive to function within their
Insect meaning "with a notched or divided body", or literally "cut into", from the neuter singular perfect passive participle of , "to cut into, to cut up", from "in"- "into" and "secare" "to cut"; because insects appear "cut into" three sections. A calque of Greek ['], "cut into sections", Pliny the Elder introduced the Latin designation as a loan-translation of the Greek word ("éntomos") or "insect" (as in entomology), which was Aristotle's term for this class of life, also in reference to their "notched" bodies. "Insect" first appears documented in English in 1601 in Holland's translation of Pliny. Translations of Aristotle's