Does a flea have a mouth? Think about your answer, then read details for the real question.

I just read a piece by a prominent brain researcher who says when you ask people, “Does a flea have a mouth?” they visualize an enlarged version of a flea in their mind and look for a mouth to get the answer. I don’t. I have no good idea what a flea looks like magnified enough to see its mouth, if it has one. I deal with the question logically instead of visually. I think—a flea eats—so yes, it has to have a mouth. It can’t ingest things through its cellular membrane like an amoeba does. The flea just has a specialized mouth that it can jab into its host to suck blood.

I’m just wondering if the psychologist is right, and I am some bizarre kind of Mr. Spock, a Vulcan in human form, who thinks in logic instead of pictures like everybody else. Or is the scientist off in some image driven La La Land himself. How did you think through the flea’s mouth question before reading this discussion of the thought process?

The issue I am trying to get at here isn’t whether you call the hypodermic needle thingy on a flea a mouth or something else, it’s whether you formed a mental image of a flea or thought logically about how a flea does what mouths are made to do.