They’ve obviously been here way longer than us, and have huge populations. So why aren’t they the dominant species on Earth?
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They are, or at least some of them are. They are everywhere, and can survive conditions many other animals cannot, their populations are huge and they reproduce explosively. They have been on the Earth far far longer than humans and any of our mammalian or even reptilian ancestors, and will be here after we’re long gone. They are incredibly resilient collectively and quickly move in to new niches wherever resources allow. The biomass of just ants outweighs the biomass of all humans – when you add in all the other insects, they dwarf all other animals. By any measure, they are dominant.
But if you’re asking why aren’t insects more “human-like” in how their brains work and how we intentionally reshape our environments, the answer is they don’t need those things to survive (and in fact thrive). They’re doing just fine without those things, and they haven’t needed to develop them to be successful. Big brains, consciousness, introspection and planning ahead are energy intensive and come with a big price tag – much much longer reproductive cycles, much much longer offspring rearing cycles, much greater susceptibility to harsh environmental conditions, etc. Those things are expensive generally and precious when resources are scarce.
What do you mean by “advanced”? As a kingdom insects are one of the most widespread forms of life, adapted to many different kinds of environments. Some species will probably outlive humanity, although that remains to be seen.
Animals don’t “advance” towards a goal. As long as the species can survive with its current skillset it will continue to do so.
They do incredibly well. There are a lot more of them than us! If you’re wondering why they aren’t as smart as humans then you might ask the same question of literally every other organism that has ever existed.
Humans are smarter than everything else owing to multiple factors, the full combination of which has never been met by any other species.
These include (but are not limited to): brain size and density, manual dexterity, range and ability to communicate, and an environment (or predators) that didn’t kill us off before we were able to evolve into this state.
Edit: a word (“as” to “of”).
Who says they’re not?
They are.
But not in a way we commonly consider advanced. Advanced in an uncommon way from an human perspective.
Let’s put it like this, they can’t get oxygen the way we get it, so insects can’t get too big, they would have breathing problems.
Being limited in size, they will never have a chance in using brain, will never have big enough brain.
But on all other aspects, they rule. Insects can’t be eliminated from the planet, while we can, quite easily in comparison.
For example, I can’t lay 8000 eggs a day to repopulate my town.
Nature’s way is basically “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it”.
Insects survive all sorts of extreme environments, reproduce explosively, can find sustenance basically from anything, they can nest almost everywhere.
They aren’t broken.
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