Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
We see this to a still more astonishing extent in the comparative
psychology of another class of animals, that is especially interesting
for many reasons--the insect class. It is well known that we find in
many insects a degree of intelligence that is found in man alone among
the Vertebrates. Everybody knows of the famous communities and states
of bees and ants, and of the very remarkable social arrangements in
them, such as we find among the more advanced races of men, but among
no other group of animals. I need only mention the social organisation
and government of the monarchic bees and the republican ants, and
their division into different conditions--queen, drone-nobles,
workers, educators, soldiers, etc. One of the most remarkable
phenomena in this very interesting province is the cattle-keeping of
the ants, which rear plant-lice as milch-cows and regularly extract
their honeyed juice. Still more remarkable is the slave-holding of the
large red ants, which steal the young of the small black ants and
bring them up as slaves. It has long been known that these political
and social arrangements of the ants are due to the deliberate
cooperation of the countless citizens, and that they understand each
other. A number of recent observers, especially Fritz Muller, Sir J.
Lubbock (Lord Avebury), and August Forel, have put the astonishing
degree of intelligence of these tiny Articulates beyond question.
Now, compare with these the mental life of many of the lower,
especially the parasitic insects, as Darwin did. There is, for
instance, the cochineal insect (Coccus), which, in its adult state,
has a motionless, shield-shaped body, attached to the leaves of
plants. Its feet are atrophied. Its snout is sunk in the tissue of the
plants of which it absorbs the sap. The whole psychic life of these
inert female parasites consists in the pleasure they experience from
sucking the sap of the plant and in sexual intercourse with the males.
It is the same with the maggot-like females of the fan-fly
(Strepsitera), which spend their lives parasitically and immovably,
without wings or feet, in the abdomen of wasps. There is no question
here of higher psychic action. If we compare these sluggish parasites
with the intelligent and active ants, we must admit that the psychic
differences between them are much greater than the psychic differences
between the lowest and highest mammals, between the Monotremes,
Marsupials, and armadillos on the one hand, and the dog, ape, or man
on the other. Yet all these insects belong to the same class of
Articulates, just as all the mammals belong to one and the same class.
And just as every consistent evolutionist must admit a common
stem-form for all these insects, so he must also for all the mammals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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