My
fascination with Mud Dauber wasp (Sceliphron caementarium)
continues. [See earlier comments and photos in Weekly [111218]
and Photo Gallery [pg0FC
and pg0FD].
Most of our guests were introduced to the wasp - their cells are
built even in our living room, see the photo on the right. And
most of my comments are on the subject of animal technology. I am,
of course, not the first person to notice the beauty and
perfection of animal technical skills and achievements but my
thoughts ran down various channels.
A
comforting thought, enhanced in the nineteenth century, was that
humans are essentially tool-making animals and that techno- logy
is the key to human evolution. The twentieth century thinkers,
aware of the new insights on animal technology, shifted away from
technological human uniqueness to language and symbolism as the
key to understand the supremacy of humans in the animal world.
Sorry, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the shift was
just to save the self-congratulations of the anthropocentric
prejudice (‘human chauvinism').
What’s
wrong with the language & symbolism hypothesis? For one thing,
it shows a fundamental lack of understanding what are the criteria
for communication values. I, myself, made several observations on
communication skills of ants. One of them is reported earlier [091011]
but the other one, involving some design, I’ll report here. I’ve
placed a pile of datura seeds approximately three meters away from
their underground quarters, the connecting path being on the clean
concrete driveway. I followed closely the first ant scouts who
reached the pile, and I’m sure the huge army of ants started
from their quarters toward the pile before the scouts physically
returned to the quarters. Maybe ants don’t have some- thing
similar to human language, maybe, so what if they don’t, but
they definitely are not in need of human-type communication
technology.
And
you know what? You’ve guess it right - I don’t believe in the
natural supremacy of humans. Dominancy and/or dictatorship - yes,
supremacy - no.