First Place: Icarus by Ainsley Sargent

Second Place: Intelligent Insects: What Most People Don’t Know by Lillian Heath

Third Place: A Celestial Map: The Origins of Aurora Borealis by Abigail Zwahlen

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Icarus by Ainsley Sargent

They tell my story as a warning, a cautionary tale,
Prioritize safety over curiosity, stability over wonder.
They don’t tell you,
I laughed as I fell,
Because,
for just a moment,
I was free.

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Intelligent Insects: What Most People Don’t Know by Lillian Heath

When many people think of the most intelligent animals, they think of
dolphins, orangutans, elephants, etc. A particularly open-minded person may
think of a reptile such as a monitor lizard, or a bird such as a raven. Almost nobody
thinks of insects (or arachnids).

For a long time, insects have been dismissed as pollinators or pests, with
little thought given to what they think and feel. They are often considered the
least important or valuable of all animals, and few people are heartbroken when
they swat a wasp or step on an ant. But the assumption that insects are simply
mindless drones is quite incorrect.

People call it animal abuse to hurt a dog or a cat for no reason, but have no
qualms about killing insects — even though insects are often smarter than cats or
dogs. This is an unfair double-standard that almost no one truly considers, but
should be thought about far more before using a flyswatter or pesticides.

When we think of intelligence, we often operate under the assumption that
intelligence is defined as human intelligence. But this is not correct, either. Many
creatures show intelligence that works entirely differently than ours does, proving
that intelligence is subjective. Insect and arachnid brains are quite different from
our own, yet they show astonishing cognitive abilities (Bradshaw).

One excellent example is the bee, a very impressive insect. Honeybees,
bumblebees — bees are very intelligent. One of the bee’s most famous signs of
intelligence is its ability to communicate. The insects use tactile and pheromonal
methods, but their most famous method is that they also ‘dance’ to communicate.
Their dance is actually a complex language, normally used to communicate the
location and richness of a food source. Not only that, but the bee is able to use
both the sun and landmarks to navigate. Recent studies show that bees even
display problem-solving and learning abilities (Hugo). They can learn from
observing and then improve what they’ve learned. “I think the most important
result in our case was that bumblebees can not just copy others but they can
improve upon what they are learning,” says Olli Loukola (Hugo). The bees can
even teach other bees what they’ve learned. “These are high, high, highly
intelligent creatures. They use their neurons in their brain as efficiently as any
other animal on the globe,” says conservation biologist Reese Halter. These insects
also show counting abilities, showing an ability to solve basic math problems with
high accuracy. They also are one of the only animals on Earth to understand the 
concept of zero, and there is significant evidence to show that they experience
emotions, pain, can learn and teach, and are sentient beings (Morell).

While bees in particular have been studied more than most other insects
and display enormous signs of intelligence and sentience, they are by far not the
only ones. Dragonflies and jumping spiders are known largely for one thing:
impressive hunting strategy. Dragonflies can calculate their prey’s future position
based on its speed and trajectory and plan accordingly, while jumping spiders stalk
their prey with excellent strategy. But one thing they both share that not many
animals do is the ability to learn from mistakes. Both the insect and the arachnid
are known to correct hunting strategy if their first attack fails and improve their
chances of success next time.

Next, ants. Ants, like honeybees, live and work together in colonies. You
could talk all day about the ants’ complex cities and social structure and even their
ability to perform medical operations, but perhaps the most impressive is that
many species of ants are some of the only non-human animals to practice
agriculture. Quite a few species farm aphids and fungus similarly to how humans
farm animals and crops. Most animals do not have the foresight to see an edible
food source and, instead of eating it immediately or bringing it back to share with
others, figure out how to farm it. Ants have been farming far longer than humans,
making them possibly the Earth’s first users of agriculture.

And finally, wasps. Wasps are far smarter than most people think. They can
learn, build associations, and use logical reasoning. But perhaps the most amazing
thing they do, which not many other animals can, is facial recognition. They use
visual cues to identify other wasps’ faces and separate them in their minds,
keeping track of many different wasps as individuals.

In the past, science and ordinary people alike have assumed that larger
brains equal smarter creatures, and smaller brains equal lower intelligence, but
this is not true at all (Hugo). And there are too many insects to count who display
their own separate learning strategies, emotions, and even personalities — much
like humans.

Insects and arachnids can use language, navigate, use strategy, correct
mistakes, build complex physical and social structures, use agriculture, use logical
reasoning, recognize faces, and have personalities. In no way are they mindless
the way they are often thought, and humans should not underestimate them.
Perhaps people should think twice before swatting or stomping a cockroach or a
spider, as it is highly likely the insect lives most consider so unimportant belong to
intelligent, sentient creatures. 

Works Cited

Bradshaw, Karen. “Insect Intelligence: Exploring Their Cognitive Abilities.” Nature
Roamer, 11 Mar. 2024, https://natureroamer.com/insect-intelligence/  

Hugo, Kristin. “Intelligence Test Shows Bees Can Learn to Solve Tasks from Other
Bees.” PBS News, 27 Feb. 2017,
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/intelligence-test-shows-bees-can-learnto-solve-tasks-from-other-bees  

Morell, Virginia. “Bees May Feel Pain.” American Association for the Advancement
of Science, 26 Jul. 2022, https://www.science.org/content/article/bees-may-feelpain  

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A Celestial Map: The Origins of Aurora Borealis by Abigail Zwahlen

They were explorers. They were father and daughter, eye single to adventure. And adventure was everywhere in the tundra- you couldn't get away from it! To the untrained eye, it was a frozen wasteland, but only Pa and his Snowflake knew the ins and outs of every snowbank, where the conifers died and where the ocean froze over. They spent their lives exploring it in the name of adventure- and adventure they found.

The tundra was a very tough place, but Pa and Snowflake were tougher. 

Every day, they'd walk, marking down everything on Pa's atlas. He was an adept artist and knew the land better than anyone alive- which wasn't much in the ever-changing landscape, where one could fall asleep in a place they knew like the back of their hand only to wake up and discover their hand had fallen off due to frostbite. 

It was an ever-changing landscape, but Pa always said that the tundra was just as alive as anyplace else, and deserved to be explored, to be understood.

Every day, they'd walk, humming through their catalog of classic songs- most unfit for a little girl. Ma had always said humming kept the body warm and the heart happy, until the polar bear got her.

Every night, they laid down in their tent, Snowflake with her head on her father's chest, her chubby pointer finger tracing the route they had taken that day on the atlas. Her father would pick at the tangles in her hair, humming a little ditty he had long since forgotten the words to, until they both fell asleep under their blankets of polar bear fur. 

They were explorers, but Snowflake, at the ripe age of ten, was always the adventurous one. It wasn't unusual for her father to wake up and find her gone, only to return a few minutes later with rosy cheeks, her mittened hand hand pointing the way they should explore that day, her eyes bright with the light that adventure would bring.

It wasn't every day that Snowflake was out for long, until she was. Until her father was left alone in the tent waiting for her. This was unknown territory for Pa. Snowflake was an explorer, but she would never desert her father. They were the only ones in this frozen hemisphere, and they knew it best. So she couldn't have ran away. 

She was lost. 

He knew, logically, what he should do. Leave the camp set up, start a fire, hopefully attract a daughter and not a dangerous animal. Look for footsteps until they were covered in a new drift of snow. Hike ten miles in each direction, shouting her name until his tears froze and his lips chapped and he became incoherent. He knew what to do, but his searches yielded no treasure and his campsite was empty of a daughter. 

For the first time since the beginning of his exploration, he felt real fear.  

He stayed there for a month, two months, more. The snow piled up above his tent, and every day he built a signal fire- but the smoke was soon lost in the blizzard swirling high above.

She was alive, she had to be, she was an explorer. She had more survival instincts than most predators. She would find her way back to him. He was the cartographer, but his daughter had disappeared to a place he couldn't map. He couldn't help her.

Hope turned to despair, and seasons changed, almost imperceptible in the tundra, where the seasons were really just snow and more snow. The father now cursed himself and knew he had made a mistake. He shouldn't have stayed in one place! She couldn't find her way back, not in a place where every step could be covered in an instant, and the eternal snowdrift left no landmarks. 

They could find their way to the ocean but not to each other. It was all his fault! He raised her to be an explorer, and explorers can know how to find their way forward, but seldom know how to find their way home. He knew he couldn't stay put any longer. With no idea where his daughter was, or which direction she had departed in, he started off. 

For the first time, he was alone in the tundra, the white of the snow blinding his eyes and the loneliness crushing his heart. With each snowflake that landed on his eyelashes, he thought only of his own Snowflake. He tried not to think of how afraid she would be, only how happy the two would be when they were reunited. And they would be reunited.

She was alive. She had to be.

Every night he worked with almost manic dedication on his atlas, knowing that now more than ever he would need to map the tundra, understand it. He would wake up with charcoal  and dried saliva on his face, never recalling when he had fallen asleep, only knowing it was not enough.

He was not enough. 

She was alive, he told himself. She was alive, alone, looking for him. 

Each day, exhaustion pulled harder on his skin. His eyes ached from squinting through the snowdrift for a single Snowflake, until the evening where his body could no longer keep up with the heaviness of his heart. He collapsed onto the snow, blinking up at the sky. 

He wondered for a moment if Snowflake was looking at the same sky. 

Was she alive?

He stared at the sky, for the first time void of any snowflakes, the white flecks absent from their black canvas. The sky was beautiful. It was so still. It wouldn't be a bad thing, to have this view to be the final one he had before he died. He would have preferred his daughter, but perhaps she would be waiting on the other side of his final breath. Perhaps that was more merciful than to accept that he had failed. He didn't know if he could find her, and he knew this place better than anyone else. He was an explorer, and the only thing he could find was heartache.

He closed his eyes, and through his raspy voice started to hum a final tune, even though he no longer had anyone to keep warm for. He pictured his daughter's eyes, her bright eyes, and he opened his own, perhaps hoping that a miracle would occur, and he would be able to see them above his own.

All he saw was the sky.

Pa always said the tundra was just as alive as anyplace else, and deserved to be explored. To be understood. The tundra was empty, but that meant that the tundra could listen. There wasn't much competition.

It's hard to explain how a tundra can hear, or how a sky can assist. But it's all the more difficult to explain how a father can love his Snowflake so much that he would cross a tundra alone to find her, against all odds. Against hope.

A sky cannot talk, but it can assist, and sometimes, the grief and love of a father is something that cannot stay tied down to the earth. It cannot be contained in a single earthen vessel. Sometimes, the sky can hear a man's dying song and can turn it into a tangible thing, a light, bright as his daughter's green eyes. A tangible, twisting light, shooting across the tundra, pointing the way to his daughter. 

And sometimes, a man on the brink of death can see a light in the sky, and realize it for what it is.

A miracle.

A map.

So the father stood up slowly, the hum still passing through his chapped lips, the light shining and twisting like something alive, something real. He reached his fingers upward, and followed it down the horizon, a trick he had used with other celestial light before, but never a light that was his own. This was a clear sign. His humming would light the way to his daughter, their hearts connected by the songs they once shared. This light was a map, a final adventure for the explorer to the greatest treasure of all, the treasure he desired most. 

She was alive! She had to be!

He walked all night, humming until he thought his lungs might burst. Until dawn's harsh rays made his light impossible to see.

He slept more soundly than he had since his Snowflake disappeared. 

Every night, he followed the light, atlas in hand, eyes squinting toward the horizon and eye single to his daughter.

Every day he slept, dreaming only of his hope to see Snowflake's bright green eyes again. 

But the more days that passed, the more that Pa began to lose hope. It seemed he never made any progress. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it wasn't a map. Maybe it was just a coincidence. 

She was alive, but she wasn't getting any closer.

He laid quietly outside his tent that evening, the sky reflective of his own heart. 

Dark.

Silent. 

Empty.

He closed his eyes, and heard as if from afar a high voice humming an old drinking song she was much too young to know. 

His eyes snapped open, and he looked around. It was only a memory, only a mistake. A ghost he wished was real.

He closed his eyes again and heard it again. His mind was playing tricks on him. He tried to drift off, but it got louder, rattling within his skull until he had to open his eyes, and he saw the heavens lit up with a violet light, from a voice he could not pinpoint the owner of. 

It twisted too, but in the opposite direction, as if it was aimed straight at Pa's heart. It was Snowflake! She was looking for him! He sprung up, and tried to hum but his heart was hammering too loud and he panted, unable to draw sufficient breath. Finally, he was able to get out a crackly note, and a flicker of green lit in the sky. He hummed the refrain of that drinking song, the one he shouldn't have taught Snowflake, and the beam brightened, shooting toward the source of the new violet light.

She was alive! She was looking for him!

He squinted, trying to gauge the distance between him and his precious Snowflake, but it was too far to tell. He knew the tundra was big, and all odds were against them. They could be a mile away or a thousand, and he knew the latter was more likely.

They were explorers, with eyes single to each other. They couldn't find their way home, but they could find their way to each other. And they would, no matter the distance. Because now they had a map, the Northern Lights pointing the way to the greatest treasure of all. No obstacle, not time, not predators, not mountains, not oceans, not even the most desolate place on earth could keep them apart.

They were explorers. The tundra was tough, but Pa and his Snowflake were tougher.

 

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