Social insect

“ It is more to the point, however, to urge that this mere glorification of society as it is in the social insects is a transformation and a dissolution in one of the outlines which have been specially the symbols of man. In the cloud and confusion of the flies and bees is growing fainter and fainter, as is finally disappearing, the idea of the human family. The hive has become larger than the house, the bees are destroying their captors; what the locust hath left, the caterpillar hath eaten; and the little house and garden of our friend Jones is in a bad way. ”

“ Concerning the government of social insects, we are as yet utterly in the dark. We see works undertaken, altered and extended, criminals executed, guards set, food brought in, nuisances removed, expeditions planned, and wars waged, but we do not see the guiding spirit. Who determines in what direction a body of ecitons shall set out on a foray? Who regulates the numbers and the position of the guard found at the entrances of an ant-hill? ”

“ The social equilibrium was, however, bi-diurnally restored by a common pursuit—a general warfare under the black flag against a common enemy, as insignificant individually as he was collectively formidable—an insect, in short, whose domesticity on the human body is, according to some naturalists, one of the differences between our species and the rest of creation. ”

“ Social insects furnish us with instances completely to the point,—and instances showing us, indeed, to what a marvelous degree the life of the individual may be absorbed in subserving the lives of other individuals... Neither the ant nor the bee can be supposed to have a sense of duty, in the acceptation we give to that word ”

“ As each bird, however, only works at his own and his partner's hole, it is evident that this kind of social working is not the same as that of ants or bees and other such insect communities, though it has something of that appearance. ”

“ The great variety in the habits of the species, the extreme industry, skill, and self-denial they display in carrying out their voluntary labours, render them one of the most instructive groups of the animal kingdom. There are no social or gregarious {91}forms, they are true individualists, and their lives and instincts offer many subjects for reflection. Unlike the social Insects they can learn nothing whatever from either example or precept. The skill of each individual is prompted by no imitation. ”

“ But I answer you that such a world actually exists, and that it can be studied in almost any part of the East or of Europe by a person of scientific training. The world of insects actually furnishes examples of such a moral transformation. It is for this reason that such writers as Sir John Lubbock and Herbert Spencer have not hesitated to say that certain kinds of social insects have immensely surpassed men, both in social and in ethical progress. ”

“ The insect has departed in the night, having finished its business there. It is a nomad, a night-walker, which leaves its dwelling without regret and easily acquires another. Often, on the other hand, the insect will be found at the bottom of the burrow; sometimes a male, sometimes a female, but always alone. The two sexes, equally zealous in excavating their burrows, work apart without collaboration. This is no family mansion for the rearing of offspring; it is a temporary dwelling, made by each insect for its own benefit. ”

“ Spencer, the activities of the insect-society are "activities which postpone individual well-being so completely to the well-being of the community that individual life appears to be attended to only just so far as is necessary to make possible due attention to social life, ... the individual taking only just such food and just such rest as are needful to maintain its vigor." ”

“ Perhaps it had been done from the natural urge to have about them beings more like themselves than men ... and it was plain that the race of the insect-like creatures and of men had become inextricably linked—become a social unity in the past. It was also increasingly plain that the four-limbed insect creatures had in the beginning been the cultured race, been the fathers of the science and culture of this race, had through the centuries lost their dominance to the Zervs and the Schree's upper classes—had retained the "priest" role as their own place in society. ”

“ The origin of the evil is in the kitchen-garden. It is there that we ought to keep a watch on the misdeeds of the Bruchus, were it not for the fact that we are nearly always weaponless when it comes to fighting an insect. Indestructible by reason of its numbers, its small size, and its cunning, the little creature laughs at the anger of man. The gardener curses it, but [Pg 280] the weevil is not disturbed: it imperturbably continues its trade of levying tribute. Happily we have assistants more patient and more clear-sighted than ourselves. ”

“ While solitary insects do not live to raise their young, social insects have a longer term, they exhibit moral affections and educate their offspring. Patterns of patience and industry, some of these insignificant creatures will work sixteen or eighteen hours a day. ”

“ When it is formed, as in other kinds of insects, scarabs, copris, sisyphs, geotrupes, the work is equally shared between the two sexes. Here the parallel ends, for the social evolution of the insect has led to functional differentiations extremely complicated, and if not unknown, at least abnormal, to humanity. Bee society has the female for base, human society has the couple. They are organisms so different that no comparison of them is possible, or even useful. ”

“ Yet those ants can exhibit inexplicable powers of communication, and a social organisation which has been the envy of many a philosopher, as he contrasts it with the chaos of human life. Ants charged with “Boom food,” ant communities of many thousands, all six feet high, might provide a considerable obstacle to the accepted supremacy of mankind. But the insect, however tiny, is becoming more and more to be recognised as one of the enemies of the human race. ”

“ Hence it profits the species to have the reproductive system developed comparatively early—in advance, even, of various less essential parts. Quite otherwise is it with social insects, which take such remarkable care of their young; or rather to make the case parallel—quite otherwise is it with those types from which the social insects have descended, bringing into the social state their inherited instincts and constitutions. ”

“ The social bonds are looser and they allow a freer play of the constituents; but nevertheless the same laws that control the activities of the cells making up what we now take as the individual element, command obedience on the part of the interrelated members of an insect community with equal strictness. ”

“ A remarkable difference is found to exist between the stages of development in the physical and moral natures. The insect passes through three degrees, the larva, the pupa, and imago, the last phase being the noblest, and the middle the most torpid of the three conditions. With man and woman physically it is different. ”

“ WHOEVER looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats, and innumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must have remarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes the main business of their life. If we go into a library or news-room, we see the same function on a higher plane, performed with like ardor, with equal impatience of interruption, indicating the sweetness of the act. In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight. ”

“ Amongst low creatures such as Myxomycetes and Siphonophora, the individuals disappear wholly or almost wholly in the community; but the sacrifice is small, as in these creatures the consciousness of individuality has not appeared. Social insects are in a stage intermediate between that of the lower animals and man. ”

“ They are small but powerful insects, and have long been noted for their remarkable intelligence and interesting habits. They are social insects, living in communities regulated by definite laws, each member of the society bearing a well-defined and separate part in the work of the colony. Each community consists of males; of females much larger than the males; and of barren females, otherwise called neuters, workers, or nurses. ”

“ For instance, we regard the Order Hymenoptera as the most intelligent because most of the social insects are included in it; but it has not yet been proved, probably never will be proved, that the social instincts resulted from intelligence which has "lapsed." ”

“ Among the social insects the males are little more than flying sexual organs, which after copulation are incapable of leading an independent existence and die of hunger and exhaustion in the case of ants or termites, or are massacred by the workers in the case of bees. ”

“ In order to explain how the study of social insects has set moralists of recent years thinking in a new direction, it will be necessary to generalize a great deal in the course of so short a lecture. It is especially the social conditions of the ants which has inspired these new ideas; but you must not think that any one species of ants furnishes us with all the facts. The facts have been arrived at only through the study of hundreds of different kinds of ants by hundreds of scientific men ”

“ The thing is done in the twinkling of an eye; before the Wasp has crossed the threshold of her home, the food for her babies holds the germs of a new set of guests, who will feed on it and starve the children of the house to death.
Perhaps, after all, we should not blame too much these insects which feed on others, or on the food of others. An idle human being who feeds at other people’s tables is contemptible; we call him a parasite because he lives at his neighbor’s expense. The insect never does this; that is to say, it does not live on the food of another of the same species. ”

“ Should you sit down—we must beg to draw a veil over your hurdies, which at the moment extinguish a fearful amount of animal life—creation may be said to groan under them; and, insect as you are yourself, you are defrauding millions of insects of their little day. All the while you are supposing yourself alone! Now, are you not, as we hinted, a prodigious ninny? But the whole wilderness—as you choose to call it—is crawling with various life. ”

“ Other insects are endowed with similar delicacy of organization; the imagination recoils with wonder from the multiplicity and variety of provisions invented by nature for the security of the apparently feeble insect tribe. We have still to consider this fragile creature as demonstrating the line of demarcation between mankind and the brute creation. ”

“ Instinct prevails over all sentiment; we crush him at once, and there is his grim and grisly corpse, the ugliest object in nature. This incident has disturbed our tranquillity. In truth, the whole insect tribe, so far as we can judge, are made more for themselves, and less for man, than any other portion of creation. ”

“ In addition to the many models of thrift and virtuous industry, embodying types of many of the trade employments known to humanity, have we not also among these "meadow tribes" our luxurious "idlers" and "exquisites," the butterflies and flower-haunting flies and "dandy" beetles; and, opposed to all these, the suggestive antithesis of the promiscuous marauders, thieves, and brigands everywhere interspersed?
Thus we have our individual insect assassin and assassination organized in war; so, on the other hand, have we our insect merrymakers; why not, then, our picnic or carnival? ”

“ Allow that the great duty of the insect tribe is to cleanse the earth and atmosphere from countless impurities noxious to the human race, how great a plague would our benefactors themselves become were it not for the various classes of carnivorous insects who prey upon them, and are in their turn the prey of others! ”

“ In a tropical country, a residence in such a situation would be certain death to a human being, but the same locality will be found to swarm with insects and reptiles of all classes.
Thus, what is inimical to human life is propitious to the insect tribe. This is the first step in favor of the argument. Therefore, whatever shall tend to increase the insect life must in an inverse ratio war with human existence. ”

“ The heavy “heart bowed down by weight of woe” suddenly imbibes some of the joyous elasticity which fills the insect tribe,—the bees and grasshoppers, the golden fly, glittering and humming in pure ecstasies, and the merry little beetles revelling in one continuous contra-dance. Rarely, indeed, can we overcharged human beings feel as blithesome as the insect world; we seek to taste the apples of delight which turn to ashes in our mouth, and neglect to sip with them the nectar in the breeze. ”

“ As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect. ”

“ Here we see no rash matrimonial engagements; no penniless lovers selfishly and indissolubly linked together to propagate large families Of starving children. Ail the arrangements of the insect tribe, though prompted by sheer instinct are conducted with a degree of rationality that in some cases raises the mere instinct of the creeping thing above the assumed "reason" of man. ”

“ From an objective point of view these groups of insects seem as truly societies as any human groups. Moreover, we cannot well deny to these creatures some degree of mental life, for they are known to show, both as individuals and as groups, considerable power of adaptation in the presence of danger. 2 Some have even gone so far as to claim that they see among them the beginning of that process of suggestion and imitation 3 which M. Tarde and Professor Baldwin make the sole factor in the human social process. ”