INSECT SOCIETIES 



Although reactions to novel situations have not been much 

 studied, they are clearly better developed in the more 

 specialised social species. 



Most wasps make no use of old nests, even in the tropics 

 where one can often see deserted ones in good condition. 

 It is a curious fact that whereas various solitary wasps will 

 build mud cells in the old combs of Polistes nests, the 

 Polistes themselves never seem to use an old nest, though 

 they may occasionally suspend a new one from it. The honey 

 bee, which will use a machine-made wax foundation as the 

 basis for a new comb, shows a higher form of behaviour. 

 Ants and termites, probably because they practice a less rigid 

 type of architecture, seem to be much more adaptable. This is 

 shown in the ease with which they can be domesticated in 

 artificial nests. It is, however, in the rigidity of their behaviour 

 that insect societies are most different and inferior to ours. 

 The adjustments which they can make to an unfavourable 

 or varying environment are relatively trivial. This rigidity 

 is one of the basic differences between the insect and the 

 mammal. 



Even such mammals as rats and voles explore their habitat 

 apart from an immediate hunt for food. One of the reasons 

 why they get trapped is that they tend after a time to examine 

 any new object placed in their territory. Exploratory be- 

 haviour is much more developed in monkeys, and is carried 

 still further in man. This sort of activity has allowed man 

 to develop complex societies without the physiological 

 differentiation which was essential in the social insects. We 

 have to pass education acts to prepare our citizens for social 

 life, whereas insects are, to a very large extent, hatched 

 already educated. 



There is another point of some importance. Man has been 

 social for, probably, less than a million years, whereas the 



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