Hacker News Reader

Comment by dartharva | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading somewhere that bees have the highest cognitive abilities of all insects

Thinking of smart bugs, check out the portia (aka jumping) spider. They plan multi-step, out of sight detours to ambush prey, and demonstrate impulse control. They have specialized hunting techniques for different menu items, one such is mimicking specific prey items stuck on a web to lure various types of spiders out.

Insect wise, bees have to take the cake. Symbolic communication and counting, and now time. This all tracks for something that needs to share the location of food with the colony.

Nature sure is neat.

Interesting you mention jumping spiders, I just saw a rather interesting video talking about exactly this and includes some interviews with scientists involved in some of these experiments [1]. One interesting fact I learned is that they have a sense of numeracy, and can distinguish between one, two and three-or-more objects.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QF6kaOAuYg

If you read fiction you might find The Children of Time to be interesting. It follows the hyper accelerated evolution of jumping spiders to a sentient species that eventually has to coexist with humans. It leans on a lot of fact about jumping spiders and uses it as a jumping point to what their societies might look like if given the chance to evolve as the top predators.

Aaj, Children of Time reference! Always wondered why the author chose that specific species in his story, now it makes sense

Reply on news.ycombinator.com