I recently (January, 2000) read the novel Tale Of the Troika by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (tr. Antotnina W. Bouis) and one passage struck me.

Gabby the talking bedbug (it's a strange book) is defending the superiority of bugs and insects. Discussing an experiment in which a wasp's eggs are stolen but the wasp continues to prepare the nest for them, and the position of human scientists that this shows the inferiority of the wasp compared to rational humans, he defends the value of instinctive behavior and continues:

"Fedya, picture a highway, smooth and flat from horizon to horizon. Some experimenter sets up a roadblock with a detour sign. Visibility is fine, and the driver sees that there is nothing threatening him on the other side of the roadblock. He even suspects that it's a foolish practical joke, but he follows the rules and regulations like a decent driver, he turns off onto the disgusting side road, and gets shaken and jolted, splashed with mud, and wastes a lot of time and energy to get back on the same highway two hundred yards down the road. Why? For the same reasons: he's law-abiding, and he doesn't want to be hauled to traffic court, all the more because like the wasp, he has reason to suspect that it's a trap and that behind those bushes there is a cop on a motorcycle. And now let us suppose that the invisible experimenter sets up the experiment to gauge man's intellect and that the experimenter is a conceited fool like the one who destroyed the nest. Ha, ha, ha! What conclusion do you think he would come to?" Gabby slapped the table in ecstasy with all his legs.

"No," said Fedya. "Somehow you oversimplify things, Gabby. Of course, a man can't shine intellectually when he's driving."