Why do insects foolishly continue to touch sticky traps when there are loads of others stuck on it already?

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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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Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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