I captured a parasitic wasp on the kitchen screen in a clear glass vase with a small round opening in it in order to transport him back to safety. Well, the little gaffer couldn't find the hole no matter what angle I held the thing. He kept going round and round in the widest part looking for the exit.
There is quite a crew of them around this year because of the caterpillar infestation on the Osier. They lay their eggs in the caterpillars and the larvae hatch out and become more wasps. They are very beneficial to us humans and a good thing to include in a biological pest control program.
My first thought was that he had a low IQ and was quite stupid, until it dawned on me that he is programmed to think not like a human but like a wasp. What do wasps do when they want to get away. They go from the dark place, the hive, to the light place, the sky. They are positively phototaxic in zoological terms on egress and negatively phototaxic on ingress.
We too have this kind of programming. Its instinctual and it kills a lot of people every day. The chap who slapped his hand on flying papers on the dash of his car and crossed into oncoming traffic. The climber who let go the rope because it burned his hand. The soldier who stood up in his trench because he saw a snake in the bottom.
So I changed tactics. I used my own IQ to become waspish. I wrapped my black house coat around the vase except around the opening and lo and behold, there was my little captive's head poking out with a microscopic Aha, found-it look no doubt.
One must be careful in assessing intelligence to put one's tests in the domain of the testee where their normal intelligence means something. One day I might talk about the IQ of a W.A.S.P.. ie white anglo saxon protestant.
A byproduct of this discovery of an old fact of zoology is that it was not a brilliant concept attributed to Elizabeth Kubler Ross (I think she said this...could be wrong) who said to the dying, go for the light on the other side, it was a wasp or some other much more lowly creature, perhaps even the first living thing, who simply wanted to get warm who adopted the behavior.
Jormawankenobe
© 2008 J. Jyrkkanen
2 comments on The IQ of a Wasp
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Score one for critical thinking!
Its so interesting how so many years of evolution have programmed us to have these knee jerk reactions. We've evolved past the point of needing them yet we're still slaves to our own genes. Our minds are tethered to a physical base and forced to oblige by all the rules that the physical base runs by. I think it was Einstein who said (paraphrasing) that if man ever became capable of using all the power of the mind then it wouldn't be necissary to have a physical extension. We could just be conscious balls of energy. The genetic chains that gripped that wasp and grip us would be gone and we would have completely unbiased and untethered minds. Imagine that, an unlimited universe of thought. Ah the possibilities...