Is it plausible that current insects will evolve sapience?

Scenario: In my Evil Overlord plan, I release a poison into the wild which should kill all humans. However I made some sort of mistake in my poison design and I killed all Vertebrates bigger than 0.5 cm.

The poison under discussion is a plot device, made out of unobtainium and handwavium. It works just fine, thank you. (Except the deadly flaw I mentioned earlier. Oopsie!)

So what Earth is left with is just insects. The question assumes that what is left alive on Earth tomorrow is just insects. The flora stayed alive and unharmed.

I know it is safe to assume that Earth will survive this. It is safe to assume from the perspective of answering the question that this will be the next golden era for insects and they will grow to maximum size plausible for insects on Earth which should be circa 1m in size.

Now, can I assume that today's insects would be able to evolve into sapience?

By sapience I define:

• Ability to use tools
• Ability to improve on such tools
• Ability to create art

I know I hand-waved a lot in this setup. So I would like to have at least some scientific plausibility in my story.

Time does not matter. Given a million or billion years, is it plausible to assume that current insects will evolve into some sapient form, if given the perfect environment in which to do so?

posted almost 8 years ago

Pavel Janicek‭

6 reputation 38 0 1 0