We have mud dauber wasps around the house. I can't find a good reference for neuron count...the only one I see is for super tiny parasitic wasps which I can't imagine is accurate. Lets assume they are on the order of honey bees at 500k-1M neurons.
This past fall I saw one on the ceiling of my front porch. It had a rear leg pinched between the soffit and the edge of a can light. It was pretty obviously struggling, pulling away with its remaining legs and every now and then buzzing its wings. It was interesting but kind of a dumb 'more powah' response that could be the result of a biological integrator of some form.
I then saw one of the most remarkable things that I've personally witnessed in nature. Another wasp of the same type was randomly flying by, about 6" below the level of the ceiling and along a path that would have brought it no closer than a foot away from the stuck wasp. After flying past the stuck wasp, it took a hard right, circled around and landed near the stuck one. It then proceeded to walk up, grab the stuck ankle (?) of the other wasp and help it tug. They both worked on it for a few seconds, broke the first wasp free (not sure if the foot was still intact), then they both flew away in different directions.
I can build a mental model of a biological automaton lacing together finely tuned feedback loops that cause it to 'act' in a way that supports itself. Extending that to a point where it appears to identify, empathize, re-plan, solve a physical problem then resume prior plan starts to stretch my ability to imagine without some kind of subjective consciousness backing it all.
DNA labelling and analyses of confocal z-series reveal that the brain of Macrobiotus cf. harmsworthi contains ∼200 nuclei that are arranged in a bilaterally symmetric pattern (Figure 2D and Figure S1). Since some of these nuclei are likely to be from non-neuronal cell types, such as glia cells, the tardigrade brain might contain fewer than 200 neurons.
Mayer et al. "Selective neuronal staining in tardigrades and onychophorans provides insights into the evolution of segmental ganglia in panarthropods": https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-13-230
Also note that tartigrades apparently have a constant number of cells throughout their life, so instead of increasing the cell count, they just increase cell size. The cells can have increased complexity anyways. All it really means that the nervous system has about 200 nuclei. Also don't forget that even single celled organisms are capable of the classical behaviours like hunting for food, running away from predators, forming colonies (e.g. bacteria), etc.
I know next to nothing about a bug’s life, but interesting to consider distress signals being tuned into otherwise solitary creatures. For colony wasp/bee I could see why distress would bring help (bring more venom!) but solitary… maybe it was kin?
But what he explains means there's also some problem solving there. I mean, the coming one grabbed just the ankle that stuck. She didn't pull the other wasp from any other part of her body.
This past fall I saw one on the ceiling of my front porch. It had a rear leg pinched between the soffit and the edge of a can light. It was pretty obviously struggling, pulling away with its remaining legs and every now and then buzzing its wings. It was interesting but kind of a dumb 'more powah' response that could be the result of a biological integrator of some form.
I then saw one of the most remarkable things that I've personally witnessed in nature. Another wasp of the same type was randomly flying by, about 6" below the level of the ceiling and along a path that would have brought it no closer than a foot away from the stuck wasp. After flying past the stuck wasp, it took a hard right, circled around and landed near the stuck one. It then proceeded to walk up, grab the stuck ankle (?) of the other wasp and help it tug. They both worked on it for a few seconds, broke the first wasp free (not sure if the foot was still intact), then they both flew away in different directions.
I can build a mental model of a biological automaton lacing together finely tuned feedback loops that cause it to 'act' in a way that supports itself. Extending that to a point where it appears to identify, empathize, re-plan, solve a physical problem then resume prior plan starts to stretch my ability to imagine without some kind of subjective consciousness backing it all.