TITLE: If Only Ants Watched Netflix...
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 04, 2022  9:18 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:

 In the essay "On Societies as Organisms", Lewis Thomas says that
 we "violate science" when we try to read human meaning into the
 structures and behaviors of insects.  But it's hard not to:

<blockquote><em>
 Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment.  They
 farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use
 chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves.  The
 families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae
 like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together
 for their fungus gardens.  They exchange information ceaselessly.
 They do everything but watch television.
</em></blockquote>

 I'm not sure if humans should be embarrassed for still imitating
 some of the less savory behaviors of insects, or if ants should be
 embarrassed for reflecting some of the less savory behaviors of
 humans.

 Biology has never been my forte, so I've read and learned less
 about it than many other sciences.  Enjoying chemistry a bit at
 least helped keep me within range of the life sciences.  I was
 fortunate to grow up in the Digital Age.

 But with many people thinking the 21st century will the Age of
 Biology, I feel like I should get more in tune with the times.  I
 picked up Thomas's now classic <em>The Lives of a Cell</em>, in
 which the quoted essay appears, as a brief foray into biological
 thinking about the world.  I'm only a few pages in, but it is
 striking a chord.  I can imagine so many parallels with computing
 and software.  Perhaps I can be as at home in the 21st century as
 I was in the 20th.
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