CHAPTER V 



SOCIAL LIFE OF ANIMALS 



I . Partnerships — 2. Co-operation and Division of Labour — 3. Gre- 

 garious Life and Combined Action — 4. Beavers — 5- ^^^^ — 6. 

 Ants — 7. Termites — 8. Evohttion of Social Life — 9. Advantages 

 of Social Life — 10. A Note on the Social Organism — 11. 

 Conclusions 



The over- fed plant bears many leaves but its flowers 

 are few ; the animal which eats too much becomes fat ; 

 and we know that within the living body one part may 

 grow out of proportion to the others. It seems as if 

 organ competed with organ within the living' engine, as 

 if one tissue outgrew its neighbours in the living web, as 

 if there were some struggle for existence between the 

 individual units which form the city of cells in any of the 

 higher animals. This idea of internal competition has 

 been elaborated by a German biologist, Roux, in a work 

 entitled The Struggle of Parts withiji the Orga?tzsm, and 

 it is full of suggestiveness. It can be verified from our 

 own experience ; but yet it seems strange. For we rightly 

 think of an organism as a unity in which the parts are 

 bound together in mutual helpfulness, being members one 

 of another. 



Now, just as a biologist would exaggerate greatly if he 

 maintained that the struggle of parts was the most im- 

 portant fact about an organism, so would a naturalist if he 

 maintained that there was in nature struggle only and no 

 helpfulness. 



