MORE SOCIAL THAN MAN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23829, 8 June 1939, Page 14

MORE SOCIAL THAN MAN

THE ANTS AND BEES LECTURE BY PROFESSOR MARPLES Looking at the future of mankind from the biological viewpoint, Professor B. J. Marples, in a lecture on Sunday on “The Social Life of Animals,’’ said the problem with which human beings were faced was that of developing social capacities equal to those of the ants and bees, while still remaining human. Whereas these insects had evolved a social life over many milliofts of years, mankind, a very young species, considered biologically, had been pitchforked into circumstances' that demand'.d a social life that \tfas beyond it. These .insects sacrificed themselves as a matter of course, and without any compulsion, to the g°od .of the community, whilst humans continued to think of their individual interests or to compete for advantages for their own families or other limited groups. The lecture was given before, the W.E.A Railway Class, Mr J. Saunders presiding.. Professor Marples pointed out that co-operation was only very slightly, developed among animals other than man and certain insects. There was some little organisation for defence in herds of deer, and recent studies of jackdaws had shown that they were superior to farmyard fowl, for instance, in giving the less dominant members of the community a chance' to live and rear their young. But such- cooperation was of a primitive kind by comparison with that of the ants, bees, wasps, and termites (wrongly called “ white ants ”). Honey bees were more highly organised than bumble bees, whose colonies perished each year with the approach of winter, leaving only the female to hibernate till the spring. Also they had more endurance than the wasp communities, for the reason that they lived on vegetable foods, whereas the wasps had to depend on the more precarious hunting of prey. Ants were even more highly developed than the bees, the lecturer said, probably because they had had- to learn to overcome the greater difficulties of living on or under the ground instead of flying. Ants were probably the most numerous of all species on the earth, and this was an indication' of the value of a highly developed social life. Functions were very much specialised. A few females were set aside, as in the case of bees, as the mothers or breeders—it was not really correct to call them queens—and others became the workers. Ants made use of certain domesticated bugs as a source of food, just as we milked cows. Among some varieties the larger members, with specially developed jaws, had the task of soldiers, or might be required to crush seeds that were too hard for the jaws of the smaller worker caste. There was a highly developed system of agriculture, which consisted of growing fungus on vegetation which members of the colony had chewed to make a good growing surface. As for the use of tools, there was a kind of tropical ant that used silk for sewing leaves together to form nests. The silk was obtained from their own young, in the grub stage. So great was the instinct of mutual aid that ants which had food stored in their crops would always give to a poorer member of the community. Some stored up honey until they became swollen creatures with no function, save the honeypots of the community. It was not to be supposed that their actions were all altruistic, for it had been discovered that the workers got certain pleasurable satisfactions from secretions in return for feeding the young and caring for the queens. ' After pointing out the damage that parasites could do to these communities, Dr Marples quoted from W. M. Wheeler, the American authority, to show the lesson that mankind ..might learn—- “ Our bodies, our domestic animals, and food plants, dwellings, stored foods, clothing—and refuse support such: members of greedy organisms, and we extend that the biologist marvels how the race can survive. We not only tolerate but even foster in our midst whole parasitic trades, institutions, castes, and nations, hordes of bureau-' crats, grafting politicians, middlemen, profiteers and usurers, a vast and varied assortment of criminals, hoboes, defectives, prostitutes, white-slavers, and other purveyors to anti-social proclivities, in a word so many nonproductive, food-consuming, spaceoccupying parasites that thejr support absorbs nearly all the energy of the independent members of society. This condition is, of course, responsible for activity in many nations. Biology has the small amount of free, creative only one great catergprical imperative to offer us, and that is: * Be neither a parasite nor a host.’ ” In the discussion that followed Mr A. E. B. Ward quoted from Kropotkin’s “ Mutual Aid ” the contention that the co-operative animals were better able to survive than those that were continually at war; and that, whilst competition and natural selection had played a part, mutual aid had been the chief factor in evolution. Mr A. B. Powell said that the period of competition that had followed upon the primitive socialism among mankind had helped to develop the intellect, and that when humanity returned to social living it would be on a higher scale by virtue of this intellectual advancement.

A vote of thanks was passed to the lecturer on the motion of the chairman.