A few examples of this would be sticky traps for flies/wasps or ones for rats even.
Why would a wasp, for example, fly onto a sticky pad trap that has 30+ other (mostly dead) wasps on it already? Surely at some point the incoming wasps would see it’s buddies either dead or helplessly trying to get unstuck, and think: “maybe something is wrong here”. But they don’t… Are they really that dumb?
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Insects rely more on touch, and chemical detection senses, than on eyesight. Ants, for example, emit a pheromone when they die, which other ants can “smell” to realize they’re in the presence of dead comrades. (Although ants are unusually societal, for an insect.)
You gotta remember that human brains have exceptional visual processing ability compared even to other mammals, let alone insects. To the extent that insects process visuals well, it’s usually to detect motion, not any broader situational context.
In general, these things make more sense if you think not in terms like “smart” and “dumb” but rather, “adapted to a specific ecological niche.” Most organisms have at least a couple skills they’re better at than us, not because they’re “smarter” but because ecological pressures caused them to evolve particular talents – and weak points.
There’s a biology theory (aka observed but challenging to ‘prove’ outright) that most ‘lower’ animals and certainly most insects don’t recognise others, even others of their own species, as ‘same as me’. So a fly would see another fly, maybe even one hatched from the same mother, and not even recognise the other as ‘oh that’s also a fly!’
So they don’t see a fly trap with lots of flies as ‘oh no! My brother Jerry and my 2nd cousin once removed Tania are in a glue trap, I better not go there’. they simply smell a great smell and see a flat surface and land on it to look for the food.
They are automatons with tiny brains. Evolution taught them to go eat stuff at any cost. A billion individuals will die, but another billion will survive.
Fly1: stuck on trap
Fly2: “man, that guy is there for 2 hours already. Must be some good shit! Lemme go get some.”
Yes, they are that dumb. They have an extremely small nervous ganglion compared to our brain. Most of it is needed for them to fly well. None of it is used to make complex decision, like not going on a trap because there are corpses of the same species on it.
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