science

I just watched a great video on spider intelligence that discussed how insects and arthropods have a different biological pressure on their intelligence. Because exoskeletal animals can't grow in size they have been limited in how big their brains can become, creating an increased evolutionary pressure to come up with more efficient ways to solve cognitive problems compared to larger animals. For instance jumping spiders peripheral eyes can send signals directly to the legs, skipping the brain entirely, to tell the spider to turn to the side to face prey.