Do you feel guilty when you kill insects?

Well, it depends on how you want to define "intelligence". I think about this allot actually, as people always ask me if snakes or reptiles are intelligent. To me, intelligence is not just based on gaining knowledge, but then making independent decisions using the acquired knowledge. That is really the only way to judge whether something has actually acquired knowledge. Otherwise, the animal is just acting on an instinctual behavior. And with most pets, we use both to one extent or another. A cat using a litter pan is an example of instinctual behavior. A cat learning where the litter pan is, or that different types of litter can be used, is just modifying the natural instinct. A cat finding the food bowl and eating is natural instinct. A cat learning that it can poke and claw you softly in the morning because you will eventually get up to feed it, is some form of decision based intelligence, learned from a previous experience.

It will be curious to see what comes of that research with insects. Allot of that doesn't necessarily prove intelligence yet, as there is a large set of instinctual behaviors in social insects. They can process allot of information, but whatever the information is, it seems they follow a set course of behavior based on the set stimuli. Can the insect learn from things that have happened to it, and then change it's instinctual behaviors? That will be interesting to see.