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Dr. Hutchins further demonstrates that insect instinct is a form of intelligence that often rivals human reason. Prompted by instinct, insects perfected flight 100 million years before the pterodactyl; wasps manufacture paper for their nests and fireflies produce cold light; ants in their wanderings use celestial navigation, and the dragonfly nymph is jet-propelled: when pursued by a predator, it draws water into its rectum and forcibly expels it to make a jetaway. Some insect predators are cunning devils. There is an East Indian bug that captures ants by pretending to be a plant. Attracted by a honeyed tuft of bright red hair on the predator's abdomen, the victim takes a lick, falls down drugged and is promptly punctured and sucked dry. In other matters, however, ants are far from stupid. They practice husbandry and agriculture—some species keep herds of aphids and others grow subterraneous gardens of fungi. And there is one species of wasp that has even learned how to use a tool: it trowels the sides of its earthen house with a pebble.
On page 268, however, Dr. Hutchins is forced to admit, reluctantly, that insects are sometimes terribly silly about sex. The bloom of the Ophrys orchid, for example, so closely resembles the female wasp of the Scolia genus that the male wasp cannot tell the difference and spends most of the day mating merrily with one blossom after another. In the process, pollen is transferred and the orchids multiply, Dr. Hutchins reports; but the neglected female remains waspish.