Of Ants and Men

Abstract

THE behaviour of ants has excited the interest and the philosophical reflexions of man through the centuries. The parallels to be drawn between the social lives of these insects and those of the human race have only occupied attention in recent years. As the author of this, book remarks, the question o that comes into prominence is how far can we compare these ant societies with our own without becoming hopelessly involved in a bog of anthropomorphism? In other words, he goes on to, reflect, can we legitimately “go to the ant” without reading into our findings many things that really do not exist? The consideration of these and kindred subjects and their elucidation form the main reasons for writing this book. As the author goes on to say, among the very few living creatures whose social development at all parallels our own, the ants are predominant. Their social system, however, is of far greater antiquity than that of man, perhaps by fifty, or more, million years. Ages before man had become evolved ants were already so much like their descendants that many of their fossil representatives have been relegated to living genera. Ants have the further advantage in that they have been able to depend upon a host of genera and species for the furtherance of their evolutionary trends, whereas the society of man has had, at most, scarcely a handful of species available. The inevitable consequence has been the survival to the present day of a nearly complete series of evolutionary forms among living ants-numerous 'missing links' and 'living fossils' are thus available for study. The evolutionary history of ants, therefore, is much more complete and much better preserved than that of man.

Of Ants and Men

By Dr. Caryl P. Haskins. Pp. vii + 244 + 15 plates. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1946.) 12s. 6d. net.