Insects with tiny brains may be as intelligent as much bigger animals

Washington, Nov 18 (ANI): Bigger is not necessarily better, at least when it comes to brains, says a new study, which found that tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead.

"Animals with bigger brains are not necessarily more intelligent," says Lars Chittka from Queen Mary, University of London.

Research repeatedly shows how insects are capable of some intelligent behaviours scientists previously thought was unique to larger animals.

For example, honeybees can count, categorise similar objects like dogs or human faces, understand 'same' and 'different', and differentiate between shapes that are symmetrical and asymmetrical.

"We know that body size is the single best way to predict an animal's brain size. However, contrary to popular belief, we can't say that brain size predicts their capacity for intelligent behaviour," says Chittka.

Differences in brain size between animals is extreme: a whale's brain can weigh up to 9 kg (with over 200 billion nerve cells), and human brains vary between 1.25 kg and 1.45 kg (with an estimated 85 billion nerve cells). A honeybee's brain weighs only 1 milligram and contains fewer than a million nerve cells.

While some increases in brain size do affect an animal's capability for intelligent behaviour, many size differences only exist in a specific brain region. This is often seen in animals with highly developed senses or an ability to make very precise movements.

The size increase allows the brain to function in greater detail, finer resolution, higher sensitivity or greater precision: in other words, more of the same.

Research suggests that bigger animals may need bigger brains simply because there is more to control - for example they need to move bigger muscles and therefore need more and bigger nerves to move them.

"In bigger brains we often don't find more complexity, just an endless repetition of the same neural circuits over and over. This might add detail to remembered images or sounds, but not add any degree of complexity. To use a computer analogy, bigger brains might in many cases be bigger hard drives, not necessarily better processors," says Chittka.

This must mean that much 'advanced' thinking can actually be done with very limited neuron numbers. Computer modelling shows that even consciousness can be generated with very small neural circuits, which could in theory easily fit into an insect brain.

In fact, the models suggest that counting could be achieved with only a few hundred nerve cells and only a few thousand could be enough to generate consciousness.

Engineers hope that this kind of research will lead to smarter computing with the ability to recognise human facial expressions and emotions.

The study is published in the journal Current Biology. (ANI)