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 olfaction Insects use the same signal for many different uses depending on the situation this is called chemical parsimony. Situations that may change how an insect behaves in reaction to a scent are things like the concentration of the compound, the life stage of the insect, its mating status, other olfactory cues, the insects feeding state (hungry or full), the time of day, or even the insects body position. For example, Drosophila are very attracted to apple cider vinegar but in very high concentrations an additional olfactory receptor (that has low affinity for the vinegar, Or85a) is activated which changes the