Insect cognition Insect cognition Insect cognition describes the mental capacities and study of those capacities in insects. The field developed from comparative psychology where early studies focused more on animal behavior. Researchers have examined insect cognition in bees, fruit flies, and wasps. Research questions consist of experiments aimed to evaluate insects abilities with perception, attention, memory (wasp multiple nest), spatial cognition, tools use, problem solving, and concepts. Unlike in animal behavior the concept of group cognition plays a big part in insect studies. It is hypothesized some insect classes like ant and bees think with a group cognitive to function within their
Meat ant The meat ant was first described in 1858 by British entomologist Frederick Smith in his "Catalogue of Hymenopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum part VI", under the binomial name "Formica purpurea" from a holotype worker ant he collected in Melbourne, Victoria. The type material is currently housed in the Natural History Museum, London. In 1862, Austrian entomologist Gustav Mayr erected the genus "Iridomyrmex", and reclassified the meat ant as a member of "Iridomyrmex" rather than the genus "Formica". The ant was named "Iridomyrmex purpurea" in 1862. Mayr renamed the ant as "Iridomyrmex purpureus" one year after. "I.