Let's study ID: insect intelligent activity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, March 12, 2022, 17:20 (775 days ago) @ David Turell

Jumping spider study:

https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/are-spiders-intelligent

"Behaviors that can be described as “cognitive,” as opposed to automatic responses, could be fairly common among spiders, says Dimitrov, coauthor of a study on spider diversity published in the 2021 Annual Review of Entomology. From orb weavers that adjust the way they build their webs based on the type of prey they are catching to ghost spiders that can learn to associate a reward with the smell of vanilla, there’s more going on in spider brains than they commonly get credit for.

“'It’s not so much the size of the brain that matters, but what the animal can do with what it’s got,” says arachnologist Fiona Cross of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

"Cross studies the behavior of jumping spiders, the undisputed champs of cognition among spiders. Although these tiny arachnids have brains that could literally fit on the head of a pin, the work of Cross and other scientists suggests that they have capabilities we’d have no problem hailing as signs of intelligence if exhibited by animals with much larger brains, like dogs or human toddlers.

“'Jumping spiders are remarkably clever animals,” says visual ecologist Nathan Morehouse, who studies the spiders at the University of Cincinnati. “I always find it delightful when something like a humble jumping spider punctures our sense of biological superiority.”

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"The jumping spiders shown to have the sharpest eyesight and the most impressive smarts belong to the genus Portia, found in Africa, Asia and Australia. These spiders prefer to hunt other spiders and have strategies tailored to each species they prey upon. Renowned University of Canterbury jumping spider researcher Robert Jackson has discovered that many of Portia’s tactics are quite devious.

"When hunting another group of jumping spiders called Euryattus, Jackson reports, Portia employs a clever trick. Euryattus females build nests in curled-up dead leaves suspended in air by silk attached to rocks or vegetation. Courting males crawl down the silk suspension ropes, stand on top of the nest and shake it in a specific way. The signal draws the female out of the nest. Portia appears to take advantage of this system by mimicking the male’s shake and luring the female into an ambush.

"For Portia, finding the right strategy is especially important when pursuing spiders that also eat jumping spiders. To attack a web-building spider, for example, Portia deceives the spider into moving closer by plucking some of the silk strands of its web. If the target spider is relatively small, Portia plucks the web to mimic a trapped insect, prompting the spider to rush over thinking it’s about to have a meal — only to become one instead. But if the resident spider is bigger and potentially more dangerous, Portia may instead create a gentle disturbance similar to a fruit fly contacting a single strand at the edge of the web that the spider will slowly wander over to inspect. As soon as the target is close enough, Portia pounces and strikes with venomous fangs.

"If these strategies don’t work on a particular web spider, another of Portia’s tricks is to shake the whole web so it moves as if a gust of wind had hit it. This acts as a smokescreen for the vibration Portia makes as it crawls into the target spider’s web. In laboratory experiments, Jackson found that Portia will try different plucking methods, speeds and patterns until it finds just the right combination to fool each individual web spider it hunts — essentially learning on the job.

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"Instead of entering the web, Portia navigated a roundabout path to find a better position from which to attack. “In that context, it was better for Portia to take the detour, go around the tree trunk, go up above the spider, go down on a line of silk, and swing in, grab the spider in its web without even touching the silk,” Cross says.

"To find out how these itsy-bitsy spiders map out such complicated routes, Cross and Jackson put Portia’s mental abilities to the test in the laboratory. They built an apparatus with a central viewing tower on a platform, surrounded by water, from which a spider can see two other towers topped with boxes: one containing dead spiders that Portia likes to prey on, and one with dead leaves.

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"From the perch atop the viewing tower, the spiders carefully surveyed the scene before descending the tower and climbing up a walkway. Most spiders chose the path that led to the meal, even if this meant moving away from the prey and passing the incorrect walkway on the way. Cross and Jackson argue that the spiders planned the route from the viewing tower and then followed it, possibly by forming a mental “representation” of the scene — an impressive cognitive feat for a brain barely bigger than a poppy seed."

Comment: I'm educating everyone in ID. This article is from their website illustrating how the designer gives insect brains the ability to perform these feats. ID presented the recent book on incent brain algorithms:

https://evolutionnews.org/2021/11/new-book-animal-algorithms-spells-fresh-trouble-for-d...