The fuscatus polistesmore commonly known as the often maligned paper wasp, compared unfavorably to bees, turns out to be smarter than we thought, according to a study by American researchers from the American University of Michigan, published by the British Royal Society.
Indeed, according to the work carried out by this team, the wasp is able to make the difference between two objects. And it’s not trivial, analyzes Adrien Perrard, lecturer in ecology at the University of Paris: “This experiment shows that wasps can use abstract concepts, not simply associations between a physical object and a state and condition (e.g. “a red flower equals a reward”), but more abstract concepts: do objects are similar or different?“
In concrete terms, American researcher Elisabeth Tibbetts and her team trained wasps to choose between pairs of symbols: either the same symbol twice, or two different symbols. Then, describes Adrien Perrard, “they placed them in a maze where the wasps had to choose between either similar symbols or different symbols. But in the maze, these were symbols they had never seen.“
The insects therefore could not just resort to their memory alone to find the solution. “So they couldn’t just associate “this color is the reward”, or “this smell is the reward”specifies the French academic. The wasps had to appeal to the fact that the two colors or the two smells were the same in order to be able to choose.“
This discovery may seem insignificant, but it is a big step for science. “These experiments allow us to better understand the functioning of the brain of insects, their abilities, notes Adrien Perrard, but also to link it with the functioning of other types of brains, and therefore to understand the mechanism of reflection, of the perception of the environment, and therefore of its use.“
The next challenge for researchers will therefore be to understand how brains as small as those of wasps are able to perform operations worthy of computers.