Ants & Human Societies - Simranpreet

7/29/2019 Ants & Human Societies - Simranpreet

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Ants and Human Societies:

Moving towards a better understanding

Term Paper for Sociology of Environment

Prof.Amita Baviskar

Submitted by:

Simranpreet Singh Oberoi (12M89)


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Abstract

Although, the evolution of living from solitary life to a social life occurred only in 3-5% of all animal

species including homo sapiens, the most advanced colonies, ants or humans, are the ones thatevolve the most altruistic behavior. There is a belief that people are capable of being a lot better

than they have been. Why would someone risk his/her life to save the life of a stranger? Why would

someone give up one of his/her kidneys? We really are a wonderful species, and I think if we can

understand who we really are, then we can reach a much better world, and a much better

arrangement than we have now.1

The purpose of this paper is to probe into the evolutionary relationship between ants and humans,

understand the reasons behind the success of both and what makes them rule, draw out parallels

with the idea of eusociality and come with probable solutions to make this world a better place.2

Introduction:

Ants and Us

Since time immemorial, human beings have been fascinated, amazed, intrigued, and captivated by

ants. And yet, at first glance, there is nothing particularly attractive about these tiny creatures.

Unlike butterflies, they dont have wings with vivid colour patters; they cannot boast the iridescent

wing-cases seen on many beetles. Nor do they produce things which human beings like to eat or

wear, such as honey or silk. They dont even chirp or sing like crickets; and, unlike bees, they never

go in for dancing.

They do, however, have other characteristics which, in their way, are much more remarkable. For

one thing, their social arrangements are quite extraordinary, almost unique among living creatures,

and have often been compared to human society. Ants are not only efficient, they are hard-working

and thrifty, qualities which have always seemed like good reasons for seeing them as virtuous role

1Rustin, Susanna. "The Saturday Interview: Harvard Biologist Edward Wilson." The Guardian. Guardian News and

Media, 17 Aug. 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.2

Wilson, Edward O. "Eusociality: Origin and Consequences." Eusociality: Origin and Consequences. PNAS, 2005.

Web. 21 Feb. 2013.


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models. In 1000 BC, King Solomon recommended them, in the Old Testament, as models of wisdom:

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or

ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest (Proverbs 6:6-8). 3

What was uppermost in the ancient worlds appreciation of ants was how they could communicate

with one another, devise their division of labour, and construct nests of such architectural

complexity which the natural historian Aelian compared to palatial residences.4

The effect of these tiny creatures on human imagination was such that they inspired many a myth

and became incorporated into belief systems. The Dogon peoples of West Africa saw them as the

wives of the god Amma and the mothers of the first humans. They were also central to traditional

rituals, for example among the Wayana-Apalai peoples of Brazil, Surinam, and French Guyana,

where a boy reaching puberty had to demonstrate that he was worthy of adult status by wearing a

sling full of fire ants round his torso or tied to his back, thus proving he had the courage and

endurance to withstand the bites from these very aggressive creatures.

For millions of years they have been sending clandestine messages and following invisible trails,

they can support hundred times their own weight, stand upside down, consume vast amounts of

food and run huge distances. When they cooperate amongst themselves and come together they are

nothing less than a superpower. There are around twenty thousand species of ants and if you weigh

all the ants on this earth and compare it to the weight of all the humans, the ants are almost of the

same weight, of the same mass, as all humans. Theyre found on every continent except Antarctica

and in just about every possible setting.

Like any human city, ant colonies need to be constantly supplied with food. In a year, a colony may

consume ten million insects. They consume more meat than tigers, lions, wolves combined. With so

many ants competing for resources, it should be no surprise that ants excel in the art of war. They

are probably the most aggressive animals on Earth. This is not to imply that ants get 'angry' but

simply that war is a natural part of their instinct and daily lives, although this depends upon

species, with some being much more aggressive than others. So it is, that ants frequently make war

upon one another, and against termites.

3"Proverbs 6:6 Go to the Ant, You Sluggard; Consider Its Ways and Be Wise!" Proverbs 6:6 Go to the Ant, You

Sluggard; Consider Its Ways and Be Wise! N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.4

Keller, Laurent. "On Ants." OUPblog. Oxford University Press, 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.


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Both ants and humans have achieved "spectacular ecological success". For humans, this includes

winning out over competing forms of humanlike creatures who evolved from apelike ancestors.

Ant-type societies may be a common reason for such success.

Eusociality5

Have you ever wondered why the religious among us bristle at any challenge to the creation story

they believe? Or even why team sports evoke such intense loyalty, joy, and despair?

The answer is that everyone with no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey

for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies and raise flags.

A fundamental attribute of any society is that it has a clearly defined membership. It is possible for

a species to be social and yet not form societies: consider herds of zebra, where the animals interact

socially but can readily enter and leave the group. A society is different. There are two types:

Individual recognition societies: Each member has to recognize as an individual every othermember of its society. This takes a lot of memory, so it might be no surprise that such

societies attain a modest size, with a general limit of about a hundred individuals.

Anonymous societies: These are typical of social insects. Here, the members do notnecessarily know their comrades individually. They are nevertheless bonded by shared

markers called identity cues. Among social insects these cues are the hydrocarbon

molecules they smell on one another, which act like a national flag embedded in each

members body surface. As long as an ant has the right scent, its nestmates will accept it as

one of them. Foreign ants have a different scent and are shunned or killed.

Human societies are anonymous, too. In the history of our species we have used language and

ethnic or cultural traits (flags included) in a manner similar to how ants use hydrocarbons. So while

5Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1975. Print.


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each of us has many friends, we are like the ants in that we dont need to know each and every

individual living in our nations.6

In ancient history and prehistory, tribes gave visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship,

and a way to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups. It gave people a name inaddition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world. It made the environment less

disorienting and dangerous. Human nature has not changed. Modern groups are psychologically

equivalent to the tribes of ancient history. As such, these groups are directly descended from the

bands of primitive humans and prehumans.

The drive to join is deeply ingrained, a result of a complicated evolution that has led our species to a

condition that biologists call eusociality. Eu-, of course, is a prefix meaning pleasant or good:

euphony is something that sounds wonderful; eugenics is the attempt to improve the gene pool.

And the eusocial group contains multiple generations whose members perform altruistic acts,

sometimes against their own personal interests, to benefit their group. Eusociality is an outgrowth

of a new way of understanding evolution, which blends traditionally popular individual selection

(based on individuals competing against each other) with group selection (based on competition

among groups). Individual selection tends to favor selfish behavior. Group selection favors altruistic

behavior and is responsible for the origin of the most advanced level of social behavior, that

attained by ants, bees, termitesand humans.

Among eusocial insects, the impulse to support the group at the expense of the individual is largely

instinctual. The standard theory of the rise of eusocieties, as these evolutionarily advanced colonies

are known, credits altruism, behavior that benefits others at the cost of the individual. For an ant,

that would mean giving up the privilege of reproduction to become a sterile worker or soldier in the

colony. For a human, it might mean fighting a war in a foreign land. Today, the social world of each

modern human is not a single tribe but rather a system of interlocking tribes, among which it is

often difficult to find a single compass.7

What engenders such 'altruistic' loyalty? Darwin considered this a key problem in his theory of

evolution - why would an animal evolve so as to throw away its own chance to reproduce if it is

6Wilson, E. O. "Biologist E.O. Wilson on Why Humans, Like Ants, Need a Tribe." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily

Beast, 02 Apr. 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.7

Cromie, William J. "Harvard Gazette: Taking a Look at How Ant (and Human) Societies Might Grow." Harvard

Gazette: Taking a Look at How Ant (and Human) Societies Might Grow. Harvard News Office, 29 Sept. 2005. Web.

21 Feb. 2013.


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survival of the fittest? His answer was that evolution must act, not on the individual, but on the

group as a whole. The notion is that a gene for helping behavior can thrive even if its

disadvantageous for the individual so long as it gives the individuals group an advantage over

other groups. Darwin provided a nice example of this, imagining two tribes in conflict and noting

that if one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who

were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would

succeed better and conquer the other.

Thus was born the human condition, selfish at one time, selfless at another, and the two impulses

often conflicted. The worst in our nature coexists with the best, and so it will ever be, said Wilson.

Not all biologists agree with Wilsons ideas about the source of humanitys dominance or existential

angst. Some resist calling humans eusocial, preferring to restrict that term to animals like ants, in

which just one or a few group members reproduce and the rest attend to the royal ones brood.

Other biologists dislike invoking group selection, saying simpler, time-tested models based on

individual genealogies will do.

Why Ants and Humans Rule ?

Division of labour is key to any organised collective. The many cells in our body work closely

together (they are genetic clones sharing 100% of their genes with one another, so kin selection has

had a strong effect in producing multicellular organisms) and they divide tasks between themselves

- we have nerve cells, muscle cells, bone cells, skin cells, etc. Similarly in human society,

different people perform different tasks for which they are more or less specialised.8

Ants and termites show extraordinary adaptations to the various tasks each is alloted to. Worker

ants are usually small, though well adapted to lifting and manipulating objects with their mandibles

and front legs. Soldier ants are better armed and are often larger with tougher armour and strongerfighting muscles. The queen has an enlarged abdomen, grotesquely bloated in termites, for egg

production. Some ant and termite societies even have different types of workers or soldiers.

8"Insect_Society." Insect_Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.


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There is little hierarchy in these societies, in the human sense, workers are not treated with

contempt, rather each individual has its important role to play and plays it according to

programmed instinct. This division of labour, with each individual acting rather like a cell in a

multicellular organism, has led to the adoption of the term 'super-organism' to describe insect

societies.9

The nest is central to understanding the ecological dominance not only of ants, but of human

beings, too. Ants rule the microhabitats they occupy, consigning other insects and small animals to

life at the margins; humans own the macroworld, which we have transformed so radically and

rapidly that we now qualify as a kind of geological force. How did we and the ants gain our

superpowers? By being super-cooperators, groupies of the group, willing to set aside our small,

selfish desires and I-minded drive to join forces and seize opportunity as a self-sacrificing, hive-

minded tribe. There are plenty of social animals in the world, animals that benefit by living ingroups of greater or lesser cohesiveness. Very few species, however, have made the leap from

merely social to eusocial. To qualify as eusocial, animals must live in multigenerational

communities, practice division of labor and behave altruistically. Eusociality was one of the major

innovations in the history of life. Wherever we find highly co-operative societies, whether slime

moulds, insects or primates (including humans), we will invariably encounter discrimination and

aggression against members of neighbouring societies.10

According to Wilson, group selection is responsible for all of our virtues (honor, virtue and duty),

while individual selection produces nothing but sin (selfishness, cowardice and hypocrisy). But

its long been known that unrelated individuals can benefit from repeated cooperation with one

another, so long as there are mechanisms in place to encourage reciprocity and punish betrayal.

There is now evidence showing that our altruistic and eusocial choices are sensitive to past

interactions with individuals and that we are inclined to reward cooperators and punish cheats and

free-riders.

Group selection begins when a colony of creatures develops a behaviour that gives it a competitive

advantage over other groups. Initially, this could be down to a random genetic mutation. So, instead

of leaving the family nest, young ants or bees stick around to help. As Wilson describes it, this is the

first step on the path to the highly ordered society, with its rigid division of labour, that has made

9Hlldobler, Bert, and Edward O. Wilson.Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration. Cambridge, MA:

Belknap of Harvard UP, 1994. Print.10

Angier, Natalie. "Smithsonian.com." Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Magazine, 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.


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the social insects, along with humans, the most successful species on earth. The key event is

building a defended nest or campsite. This gives a whole new meaning to the communal spirit of

group camping trips, and especially the ritual of cooking around the campfire, to which can be

accorded massive evolutionary significance.11

Yet our eusocial nature, is nothing like that of the robotic ants. It developed along an entirely

different route and is bound up with other aspects of our humanityour anatomy, our intellect and

emotions, our sense of free will. Wilson, taking through our prehistory, highlights the stepwise

rules of engagement for achieving total global dominance.

Be a terrestrial animal. Progress in technology beyond knapped stones and wooden shaftsrequires fire. No porpoise or octopus, no matter how brilliant, can ever invent a billows and

forge.

Be a large terrestrial animal. The vast majority of land creatures weigh barely a pound ortwo, but if were going to have a big brain, we need a large body to support it.

Get the hands right. Forget standard-issue paws, hooves or claws. To hold and manipulateobjects, we need grasping hands tipped with soft spatulate fingers. With our flexible digits

and opposable thumbs, we became consummate kinesthetes, sizing up the world manually

and enriching our mind.

Ants and Humans not so alike

There are obvious parallels with human practices like war and agriculture to that of ants, but we

must be aware of the differences as well. The social insects evolved more than 100 million years

ago; their accomplishments come from small brains and pure instinct; and their lengthy evolution

has led them to become vital elements of the biosphere. In contrast, Homo sapiens evolved quite

recently; we have language and culture; and the consequences of our relatively sudden domination

have been mixed, to put it mildly: The rest of the living world could not coevolve fast enough to

accommodate the onslaught of a spectacular conqueror that seemed to come from nowhere, and it

began to crumble from the pressure.

11Rustin, Susanna. "The Saturday Interview: Harvard Biologist Edward Wilson." The Guardian. Guardian News and

Media, 17 Aug. 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.


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But Wilson also makes some radical claims about the origins of our eusocial natures. For ants, he

argues that workers are robotic extensions of the mothers genome, so their eusociality is

explained through the standard process of natural selection, in which single colonies are akin to

single animals. But this wont work for us; unlike insects, all humans compete for reproductive

resources. So how did we get to be such social animals?

One solution is kin selection, as developed by William Hamilton and extended by Richard Dawkins

in his discussion of the selfish gene. The idea is that from the perspective of the gene there is no

hard-and-fast difference between an animals interest and the interest of its kin, and hence a gene

that guides an animal to help its relatives could spread through the population even if this helping

was costly to the animal itself.

Conclusion

Some people believe that thinking about the biological basis of social and group behaviour would

fundamentally alter mans perception of himself and that the same laws of population biology and

evolutionary theory that govern behaviour in ants also governs humans.

Despite the advantages of eusocial colonies, they are very rare. Of some 2,600 families of insects

and their close relatives, only 15 boast eusocial species. It follows that nature has set a very high

bar for attainment of eusociality. When such conditions exist, natural selection works on the

flexibility of genes to provide the best returns for a group versus individuals and kin clans. First

would come cooperative breeding that ants are so famous for today, then caste systems, which is

the defining property of eusociality.12

Wilson observes that humans live in a Star Wars civilization, have stone-age emotions, live in

medieval institutions and have God-like technology. That's a dangerous condition for an advanced

species to be in. Our conquest of earth has happened so quickly that the rest of the biosphere hasnot had time to adjust and our heedless destruction of species shows scant signs of abating.

12Cromie, William J. "Harvard Gazette: Taking a Look at How Ant (and Human) Societies Might Grow." Harvard

Gazette: Taking a Look at How Ant (and Human) Societies Might Grow. Harvard News Office, 29 Sept. 2005. Web.

21 Feb. 2013.


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There is something very fundamental which binds ants and us, there is a lot we can learn if we just

realise our true self. Following few points are brought home from ants for us:

We need to be together if wish to rule Our actions should be altruistic and should be for social interest Life isnt a zero sum game and we must raise above our individual selves and think for the

community

Our cities dont necessarily have to be big to be successful Our duty at hand should be utmost important and we should do that with the best of our

abilities

Nevertheless, again in the words of Wilson, Out of an ethic of simple decency to one another, the

unrelenting application of reason, and acceptance of what we truly are, we may yet turn earth into a

permanent paradise for human beings, or the strong beginnings of one. Were not ants, and we can

do what ants cant: pull up to the nearest campfire, toast a marshmallow, sing a song.13

13Angier, Natalie. "Smithsonian.com." Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Magazine, 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.

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Ants & Human Societies - Simranpreet