This adventure began when I followed a link to an online article about insect intelligence. I had always suspected that insects know a lot more than they’re willing to let on, and that they generally want us to believe they’re stupid. Humans would likely freak out and become violent — more violent than we are normally — if we truly grasped how intelligent insects are.
As these things go, one online article led to another, and I eventually found myself reading (and trying to understand) a published scientific article written by a group of Belgian scientists and posted on the National Institutes of Health website.
The article summary caused me to wonder which species, exactly, we ought to consider ‘intelligent’. Cockroaches, or humans?
Many social species are able to perform collective decisions and reach consensus. However, how the interplay between social interactions, the diversity of preferences among the group members and the group size affects these dynamics is usually overlooked. The collective choice between odourous and odorless shelters is tested for the following three groups of social cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) which are solitary foragers: naive (individuals preferring the odorous shelter), conditioned (individuals without preference), and mixed (combining, unevenly, conditioned, and naive individuals). The robustness of the consensus is not affected by the naive individuals’ proportion, but the rate and the frequency of selection of the odorous shelter are correlated to this proportion.
I had no idea there were scientists in Belgium. Or cockroaches. But somehow, these foreigners had got a hold of some Periplaneta americana, that is, American cockroaches. Over in Europe. What a funny world we live in.
Anyway, the article grew gradually less intelligible, the further I read, which may have been related to a poor grasp of the English language on the part of the researchers, or perhaps to the tendency of scientist to hide what they don’t know about a subject through obtuse sentence structure and terminology. As far as I could tell, the scientists believed that cockroaches who have been subjected to electrical shocks (conditioned) tend to defer to the opinions of (naive?) cockroaches who have not been traumatized.
I quickly came to the conclusion, however, that I could probably glean a better understanding of the situation, straight from the horse’s mouth. Or, in this case, straight from the cockroach’s mouth.
I accidentally made the acquaintance of Jessica Bubarus a few days later, when I was having trouble sleeping and wandered into the kitchen to fix myself a bowl of whole milk yogurt, with granola and banana slices — a dish that I find beneficial whenever insomnia seeps in.
Ms. Bubarus was prowling the kitchen counter when I flicked on the light, and she quickly ducked behind the toaster — an action that I mistakenly took as an indication of a naturally shy personality. I was, however, able to coax her out into the light, by mentioning my job as writer of a semi-regular column for the Daily Post, and also that I’d recently begun investigating the topic of insect intelligence, and would she be willing to sit for a face-to-face interview?
In the interests of science?
Here’s an unedited transcript of our short but informative conversation.
LC: Ms. Bubarus, thanks so much for sitting down with me here in my kitchen, so late in the evening.
JB: No problem, Mr. Cannon. My extended family and I have always appreciated your hospitality. Especially, your tendency to leave blobs of peanut butter on your counter. My kids love peanut butter.
LC: That’s interesting to know. I thought your people were typically attracted to fermented foods.
JB: Well, that’s certainly true, among the adults. The more rotten, the better. We also like fermented beverages… which is why you occasionally find one of us stuck inside the beer bottles that you leave scattered around the house. No cockroach can resist a sip of beer.
LC: Even at the risk of his life, I guess?
JB: Well, yes, I suppose you could put it that way. But at least we don’t drink and drive, like a certain other species.
LC: Touché, Ms. Bubarus.
JB: You can call me Jessica. I mean, after all, we live in the same house.
LC: Okay. Jessica. But I must admit I’m curious about your last name? “Bubarus”?
JB: It’s the Czech word for ‘cockroach’. It translates as ‘Russian bug.’ The Czechs are not terribly fond of the Russians. My family kept the name when we came through Ellis Island, back in the late 1800s, inside an unsuspecting person’s luggage. That’s how we typically travel. We call it hitchhiking.
LC: So your family hails from eastern Europe? A long history there?
JB: Yes, a long history. Actually, we originally came from China, but I’ve got relatives pretty much everywhere now. Even Antarctica.
And given that we originally came from China, I encourage my children to use the Chinese word for ‘cockroach’ — Xiao Qiang — which translates as “Little Mighty.” Has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say?
The Chinese consider it bad luck to kill a Xiao Qiang, and I have to say, those of us who wound up here in America are envious of that fact.
So, yes, a long history. Very long. As you probably know already, my family traces its history back 350 million years, 100 million years before before the dinosaurs showed up. And by God, we outlasted those dinosaurs, after that big meteor hit off the coast of Mexico. Those were some hard times for my family, or so I’ve been told. Talk about climate change! People have no idea what climate change is, until you’ve survived a catastrophic meteor impact.
LC: That’s a pretty impressive history. I was reading a science article a few days ago, that described you folks as ‘social’ animals. Not exactly ‘eusocial’ like bees and ants, where there’s one big, extended family that lives in a colony and survives by handing out different jobs to different people, and where everyone cooperates to service the Queen. But the article said you folks are nevertheless ‘social’. And even, that you make decisions by consensus.
JB: Well, that’s a pretty good description of how things work with us. There were times, in the distant past, when influential women have tried to set themselves up as ‘The Queen’. But that didn’t work out so well, for the average family. So nowadays, we keep things running as a democracy. No one tells anyone else how to live their lives, but we cooperate, when cooperation is called for.
We have what you might call, ‘influencers’… who set fashion trends, or cultural trends, or who might try and define the intellectual landscape. But they don’t have any real political power.
In fact, some folks have told me I’m an ‘influencer’. Honestly, that’s not something I’ve tried to be, or put any effort into… but if folks want to look up to me, that’s their own problem. Ha ha.
LC: Funny you would bring up cooperation. We humans are struggling a bit, lately, with the idea of cooperation. And democracy. As you may have heard.
JB: Tell me about it! We’ve been watching you guys struggle with those problems, and… well, I mean, we’re sympathetic and all, but… like I said, we outlasted the dinosaurs, and I’m pretty doggone sure we’re going to outlast you guys, as well.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.