I’ve always had the idea that mosquitoes smell, sense heat and carbon dioxide. And yes, they have nice eyes, but was pretty amazed to see one adapting plainly to humans and using only (apparently at least) her eyesight. It’s the season of strong rains, and mosquitoes appear massively near any spot with water, desperately overwhelming any human host. Of course, they bite against clothes, and even against sneakers.
So, at a houseplant exposition, amidst houseplants, mosquitoes, and desperate people doing unreasonable things to try to get rid of them, tables covered in a green table cloth were abundant. On one of them, a confused mosquito tried and tried to insert her proboscis into the tablecloth, as if she had learned that under a piece of fabric, lies a source of blood, a careless human dressed in green clothes…
This strongly suggests that mosquitoes have an unexpected (to me) ability to learn in their short adult lifespans, since clothes do not exist in nature, so there’s no instinct that teaches them to identify clothes.
I just wanted to share this random observation about possible animal intelligence. Has someone seen other unexpected animals do intelligent things?
By the way, how do ticks feel their hosts? Once I saw a tick on a log, and put my hand next to it to see its reaction. It immediately started running and climbed to my hand. How did that thing felt me?
I expect all animals to do intelligent things - it’s the one’s that do unintelligent things that are really fascinating, or the ones that are manipulated to do them by other organisms like Toxoplasma and Cordyceps (and advertising agencies? ;) …
Acting intelligently is something of a prerequisite for sustaining life.
But yeah, when you’re brought up to think that we are something different or superior to “animals” it can be really surprising the first time you see ants use tools (and ‘wheels’ and levers!) or birds use and light fire, or any of the numerous similar things which disprove all of the things people once claimed were what made us uniquely Different and Better …
That still didn’t make it any less viscerally horrifying to watch the hikers who’d spent the night out in wet tents in the Athertons tearing off their clothes to try and get all the leeches off themselves, and watching the leeches squeeze themselves out through the fabric of their discarded shoes and shirts and crawl unerringly and inexorably back toward their hosts.
