How Insects Work in Groups^ 



By John Sudd 



Lecturer in Entomology at the University of Hull, England 



[With 2 plates] 



When people see ants or bees collecting food, or the giant mounds 

 built by termites in the tropics, they usually sense some fellow-feeling, 

 some idea that insect and human societies are at bottom similarly 

 constituted. The reason why these insects are held up to us in Scrip- 

 ture and in fable as models is that they can be seen going about tasks 

 as men do, collecting and carrying food, building and fighting. Per- 

 haps more important, they appear to combine in groups to catch, carry, 

 or build things beyond the power of a single individual. 



A termites' nest may be 2 meters high and a meter across at ground- 

 level. Each of the grains of soil of which the nest is built has been 

 carried separately and placed by a termite perhaps half a centimeter 

 long. Clearly many termite-lifetimes of work were involved — just 

 as many as the man-years of work in building a pyramid or in a space 

 program. But termite mounds are not shapeless heaps ; like pyramids 

 they have a characteristic shape as well as a complex set of internal 

 passages and chambers. The behavior of each of the huge number of 

 termites has been directed to achieve this shape; each addition to the 

 nest has somehow been brought into a correct relation with preceding 

 ones. (Seepl. 2, fig. 2.) 



We can call the behavior of termites in building such a nest coopera- 

 tive, using the word in its everyday sense, because we can see in it the 

 three points we look for before we say that people are cooperating. 

 These are, first that there should be a number of people working, sec- 

 ond that they should gain some advantage by making something larger 

 or more quickly than they could working alone, and last, and perhaps 

 most important, that each man should adjust his work to suit that of 

 his workmates. 



Reprinted by permission from Discovery, June 1963. 



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