Warner Corner - May 2009

A Community of Life
Kathy Feste, Interpretive Naturalist

Not far from where you live there is a community made up of thousands of individuals. Every individual old enough to work has work to do. There is no unemployment. All the members of this community work together for the good of the whole group. There are almost never any quarrels among them. Policemen, lawyers, and judges are not needed, and there are none. There are no teachers, either. Every member of the group is able to take part in the life and work of the community without having to be taught how. Although there are no policemen, there are many soldiers. These soldiers are ready to defend the community if an enemy should attack it. Perhaps you would like to live in this community, but you cannot. It is made up, not of people, but of ants.

There are millions of communities of ants like the one I've just described to you. There are so many scattered over the world that there is sure to be one very near you. Perhaps there is one in your backyard or at the edge of the sidewalk in front of your home.

Human beings spend so much time thinking of ourselves and our affairs that most of us do not pay much attention to the earth's other animals. We are likely to think that we are greatly superior to all other forms of animal life on the earth. As you can see from the description of a community of ants, however, we cannot claim that we are superior to all other animals in every way.

Humankind is social. The word "social" has different meanings. One meaning is organized into groups, or societies, in which the individuals work together for the success of the group, and in which different members do different kinds of work. If you are trying to decide whether an animal is social in this sense, there are two questions to be asked: Is there cooperation among the different members of each group? Is there a division of labor among the different members of each group?

Many kinds of animals are social to some extent. Wolves, for example, hunt in packs, and by working together are able to kill animals far too large to be killed by a single wolf. Beavers work together to build dams far too large to be built by a single beaver. But the only animal societies which are like our own in showing a division of labor are to be found among the wasps, bees, ants, and termites. These animals are all insects.

Insects lived on the earth long before humans appeared. Fossils of insects are found in rocks formed during the Coal Age. These rocks are thought to be more than 250 million years old. It was a long, long time before any insects became social. But fossil ants and termites 60 million years old have been found as they were caught in the sticky gum of ancient evergreen trees. The gum hardened into amber and kept the insect from decaying. The oldest fossil ants and termites found are so well developed that scientists think that they have been social insects for at least 100 million years. Humans belong to the group of animals called mammals. There were no mammals at all until long after the Coal Age. The social insects have had a far longer history than social humankind.

There are tremendous numbers of species of insects–more than all other kinds of animals put together. Only a few of these many kinds of insects have become social. The social insects have been very successful in holding their own with the earth's other inhabitants.

Among the social insects, we can find societies that are small and simple. We can find others that are large and complex. Studying insect societies of the various types may help us understand the society in which we live.