Social wasps think with a common brain

Social insects help each other in the best interest of the collective, but some wasps go one step further, sharing the entire colony’s intellectual tasks and thinking together, so individual wasps need not think so much. The surprising discovery was made in 2015 by American scientist Sean O’Donnell.

In 29 closely related wasp species, he measured the size of the mushroom-shaped area that can be compared to our hippocampus and frontal lobes, which we, more or less, use to do mental work - or 'thinking'. The area was markedly smaller in the most social wasp species, whereas it was bigger in the species that lived individually. Apparently, the social wasps help each other think, so they can make do with a smaller brain.