Insect brains evolve Machiavellian size

摘要

It is easy to think of insects, with their pinhead-sized brains, as automatons robotically carrying out their tasks. But a discovery about the brain of the humble sweat bee not only highlights the complexities of insect brains, it also helps answer one of the big questions of human evolution: why have we got such big brains?rnThe bees' unusual social structure has allowed biologists to collect some of the best evidence yet that living in a society can boost brain size.