Cockroaches make group decisions

Humans aren’t the only organisms that communicate to each other. In fact, a lot of them do.

One of these organisms is the cockroach who use chemical and tactile communication to organize themselves.

"[Cockroaches] can also use vision [to communicate]," says Dr José Halloy, a scientist in the Department of Social Ecology at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. "When they encounter each other they recognize if they belong to the same colony thanks to their antennae that are 'nooses', that is, sophisticated olfactory organs that are very sensitive," he says.

This communication is fairly intelligent as well. When testing how they communicate, it was found that cockroaches will divide themselves up perfectly after much “consultation”.

For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter, 25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.When the researchers altered this set-up so that it had three shelters with a capacity for more than 50 insects, all the cockroaches moved into the first "house