This community of mind stands the lower orders in great stead. It makes up to them in a measure for the want of reason and judgment. In what we call telepathy we get hints of the same thing among ourselves. Telepathy is probably a survival from our earlier animal state.
Maeterlinck, in his "Life of the Bee" resists the conclusion of Sir John Lubbock that flies are more intelligent than honey bees:
If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees [says Sir John], and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle down horizontally with its base to the window, you will find that the bees will persist till they die of exhaustion or hunger in their endeavors to discover an issue through the glass; while the flies, in less than two minutes, will all have sallied forth through the neck on the opposite side.
The flies are more intelligent than the bees because their problems of life are much more complicated; they are fraught with many more dangers; their enemies lurk on all sides; while the bees have very few natural enemies. There are no bee-catchers in the sense that there are scores of flycatchers. I know of no bird that preys upon the worker bees. The kingbird is sometimes called the "bee martin" because he occasionally snaps up the drones. All our insectivorous birds prey upon the flies; the swallows sweep them up in the air, the swifts scoop them in, while, besides the so-called flycatchers, the cedar-birds, the thrushes, the vireos, and all other soft-billed birds, subsist more or less upon them. Try to catch a big blow-fly upon the window-pane and see how difficult the trick is, while with a honey bee it is no trick at all. Or try to "swat" the ordinary house-fly with your hand. See how he squares himself and plants himself as your threatening hand approaches! He is ready for a trial of speed. He seems to know that your hand is slower than he is, and he is right in most cases. Now try a honey bee. The case is reversed. The bee has never been stalked; it shows no fear; and to crush it is as easy as to crush a beetle.
The wit and cunning of all animals are developed by their struggle for existence. The harder the struggle, the more their intelligence. Our skunk and porcupine are very stupid because they do not have to take thought about their own safety; Nature has done that for them.