Insects feature some of the most complex societies in the animal kingdom, but a historic perception persists that such complexity emerges from interactions between individuals whose behaviours are largely guided by innate routines. Challenging this perception, recent work shows that insects feature many aspects of social intelligence found in vertebrate societies, such as individual recognition, learning object manipulation by observation, and elements of cultural traditions. Insects also display emotion-like states, which may be linked to social behaviours such as rescuing others from danger. We review recent developments in insect social cognition and speculate that some forms of now-hardwired behaviour (e.g., nest construction) could have initially been the result of individual innovation and subsequent cultural spread, with evolution later cementing these behaviours into innate behaviour routines.

昆虫是动物王国中一些最复杂的社会的特征，但一种历史观念仍然存在，即这种复杂性来自个体之间的相互作用，这些个体的行为在很大程度上受到先天习惯的引导。挑战这种看法，最近的工作表明昆虫具有脊椎动物社会中发现的社会智能的许多方面，例如个体识别、通过观察学习对象操纵和文化传统元素。昆虫也表现出类似情绪的状态，这可能与社会行为有关，例如将他人从危险中解救出来。我们回顾了昆虫社会认知的最新发展，并推测某些形式的现在固定的行为（例如筑巢）最初可能是个体创新和随后的文化传播的结果，