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It's amazing to me how often people get tripped up on the behavior of colonial insects like bees and ants. Because all reproduction is done by a queen, it make

by rdw 14y ago

It's amazing to me how often people get tripped up on the behavior of colonial insects like bees and ants. Because all reproduction is done by a queen, it makes little sense in most circumstances to think about the sterile workers as individuals. A better way is to think of the the workers as body parts. Some of the parallels are pretty direct. The movement of ants is strongly influenced by chemical scent gradients, much like our muscles respond to ion gradients. This puts insects' seemingly-extreme altruism into perspective. Do you consider your skin cells altruistic when they are burned by excessive sun?

gort 14y ago
The difference between worker bees and cells in a body is that the cells in a body (call them "somatic cells") are 100% genetically identical to the cells that actually do the animal's reproduction - i.e. the cells that produce sperm or eggs. There's an automatic alignment of interests. Now, in bee colonies there is not this perfect alignment between worker and queen, since the workers are only the queen's daughters, related to her by 50%. There's the potential for various types of conflict, between worker and queen, or between worker and worker... For example, in many species the workers can in fact reproduce, favouring their own interests, but there's conflict between the workers to disallow this. [1] Naturally this conflict does have costs for the colony as a whole. [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v342/n6251/abs/342796a0.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v342/n6251/abs/342796a0...
vorg 14y ago
If workers in a bee colony are body parts, then why not the queen and drones also? The queen is like a brain in the body. Following on, then why not males/females in an animal tribe? People communicate with each other using subliminal smells indicating sex, anger, fear, etc. Just because animals use 50-50 gene splicing instead of 67-33 doesn't mean the group is any less an organism in itself. My personal observation suggests some humans (and presumably other animals) are the natural born leaders, most others are like the cytoplasm in a cell, and some others like the outer membrane, showing the most altruistic behavior. Pinker has a valid point that all this shows is some individuals are better at exploiting others tendency to altruism, but my observation is some humans in a group are less motivated to survive and mate than others are. Then there's those who do survive but are hard-wired to mate with their own gender, not producing offspring. How do these two groups ("Gays" and "Losers") consistently show up in animal societies?
- dllthomas 14y ago
  > The queen is like a brain in the body. The queen is much more like the genitals.

by rdw 14y ago

gort 14y ago

The difference between worker bees and cells in a body is that the cells in a body (call them "somatic cells") are 100% genetically identical to the cells that actually do the animal's reproduction - i.e. the cells that produce sperm or eggs. There's an automatic alignment of interests. Now, in bee colonies there is not this perfect alignment between worker and queen, since the workers are only the queen's daughters, related to her by 50%. There's the potential for various types of conflict, between worker and queen, or between worker and worker... For example, in many species the workers can in fact reproduce, favouring their own interests, but there's conflict between the workers to disallow this. [1] Naturally this conflict does have costs for the colony as a whole. [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v342/n6251/abs/342796a0.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v342/n6251/abs/342796a0...

vorg 14y ago

If workers in a bee colony are body parts, then why not the queen and drones also? The queen is like a brain in the body. Following on, then why not males/females in an animal tribe? People communicate with each other using subliminal smells indicating sex, anger, fear, etc. Just because animals use 50-50 gene splicing instead of 67-33 doesn't mean the group is any less an organism in itself. My personal observation suggests some humans (and presumably other animals) are the natural born leaders, most others are like the cytoplasm in a cell, and some others like the outer membrane, showing the most altruistic behavior. Pinker has a valid point that all this shows is some individuals are better at exploiting others tendency to altruism, but my observation is some humans in a group are less motivated to survive and mate than others are. Then there's those who do survive but are hard-wired to mate with their own gender, not producing offspring. How do these two groups ("Gays" and "Losers") consistently show up in animal societies?

dllthomas 14y ago
> The queen is like a brain in the body. The queen is much more like the genitals.