Oh, yes, a news reporter again compared human society with an ant colony. Well, there are similarities. Let's explore them. First, the ant has three body parts. The head, thorax and abdomen. Look closely and see that one side is a mirror image of the other. An eye and appendages on each side. Second, the head controls the mobility and the features that maintains the heartbeat and other life support systems, like metabolism, breathing, swallowing, and flight for survival. As do all insects. So do humans. Those life support systems reside in our reptilian brain.

    Insects in the Hymenoptera order have 4 wings and fly off to find a niche, that is, a particular habitat where there is space in which to rest and feed. When each specie lives long enough in a habitat to reproduce, it is said to 'fit'. That is survival of the fittest. That is natural selection.

    OK, now let's look at the differences. The outer shell that contains the vital operating system worked well for insects for millions of years. Still does for millions of species. Somewhere around three hundred million years past, animals generated a cord for the nerves and the critter needed an overhaul. The outer shell no longer sufficed hard bones developed for those that went on to be called vertebrates, classified in phylum chordata.

    I must sidetrack a bit because I am fascinated the way the classification system came from Karl von Linne. He was a Swede who immersed himself in the plant world. He was a prolific writer and because he was educated in medicine he wrote in Latin. He traveled extensively throughout Europe and found it confusing that the exact same plant had different names in different countries. So the wonderfully meticulous man devised a system to classify the plants. The system consists of two Latin words, the first for a genus or group, and the second for a species or kind. The dandy system worked for all the fussy biologists then and since Carolus Linnaeus worked out the system in the mid-seventeen hundreds.

    So back to chordata. Other than having a bony skeleton with a spinal column inside a fleshy cover, in what other ways are we different from ants? Somewhere in natural selection a change occurred to develop vertebrates. All vertebrates develop in one way or another from eggs. But the architectures and lives became very different. The fish, amphibians, and reptiles deposit eggs and in general go their own way and get on with their survival. For those species it works.

    Beyond birds natural selection developed yet another species - mammals. Eggs develop inside the body and the young are born alive. Born so helpless that the young cling to the female, literally, for days, even weeks, and months. With most mammals, after the nurturing period, the full grown young go off to fend for themselves – find their own space. As you well know, the helplessness in humans extends for years. And during that time the family gathers into groups of other families, not necessarily related by blood. Clubs, professional unions, political preferences, entertainment choices, and commodity sources – are all groups with which people might choose to associate. In every case each individual remains the individual acting on its own, according to its own choices. Never once does it require another individual's cooperation in order to act.

    Outside an ant colony, one individual cannot act on its own. It simply dies. Outside an ant colony, two individuals cannot do anything. There is an underlying pattern to adhere to. Individuals have no instinct to act on their own. Within the colony the plan is well laid, each individual has a role to play, an act to perform, a job to do and all runs smoothly.

    I suppose it would be helpful if human societies could operate in such a manner. But it does not. It cannot. So how different are the two great colonies!

Naomi Sherer