Gadagkar, R (2021) Gadagkar, R., 2021. More Fun Than Fun: What Can We Learn from Insect Societies? The Wire Science. In:
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Abstract
Many insects such as ants, bees, wasps and termites organise themselves into societies with division of labour, communication, conflict, cooperation and altruism. Insect societies resemble human societies in many ways and are arguably more efficient than ours in some ways. They sustainably harvest environmental resources, engineer their environments both inside and outside their nests, practice agriculture, fight disease with a combination of individual and social immunity, organise social hunting parties, navigate their environment using terrestrial and celestial cues and majorly influence the evolutionary trajectories of other organisms such as flowering plants. They do all this with brains the size of a pinhead and without a leader, by harnessing the power of self-organisation and social intelligence. They have earned the name ‘superorganism’ and are among the most ecologically dominant species on the planet. So, can we humans not learn anything from insect societies? Well, there are difficulties, not so much to do with them but with ourselves. But perhaps we can overcome these problems, especially if we can recognise and learn from our past mistakes.
| Item Type: | Editorials/Short Communications |
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| Additional Information: | The copyright of this article belongs to the Authors. |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Mar 2021 09:53 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Jun 2022 07:12 |
| URI: | https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68424 |
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