Queen Mary University of London, Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK.
Curr Biol. 2017 Oct 9;27(19):R1049-R1053. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.008.
Maeterlinck did not mean to suggest that honeybees rival humans in intelligence - rather he saw in the bee a qualitatively different form of intelligence, tailored to the challenges of a profoundly different kind of society and lifestyle. Insects are strange "aliens from inner space", with sensory and cognitive worlds wholly different from our own. The 19 century discovery that ants can detect ultraviolet light triggered a golden age in the exploration of the diversity of sensory systems of insects (and indeed other animals), identifying such abilities as magnetic compasses, electrosensitivity, polarization vision, and peculiar locations for sense organs such as the infrared sensors on the abdomens of some beetles or photoreceptors on the genitalia of some butterflies. Could insect minds be equally strange and diverse?
梅特林克并不是想说蜜蜂在智力上能与人类相媲美——相反，他在蜜蜂身上看到了一种截然不同的智力形式，这种智力是为了应对一种截然不同的社会和生活方式的挑战而量身定制的。昆虫是奇怪的“来自内部空间的外星人”，它们的感觉和认知世界与我们自己的完全不同。19 世纪发现蚂蚁能够探测到紫外线，这引发了昆虫（甚至其他动物）感觉系统多样性探索的黄金时代，确定了一些能力，如磁罗盘、电敏感性、偏振视觉，以及一些感觉器官的奇特位置，如一些甲虫腹部的红外线传感器或一些蝴蝶生殖器上的光感受器。昆虫的思维是否同样奇怪和多样？
