THE IMPACT OF MYRMECOLOGY ON RACISM, ROBBERY, MONARCHY, AND WAR

by Cesare Baroni Urbani
University of Basle, Institute for the Protection of Nature (NLU) – Biogeography, Neuhausstrasse 31, CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland

     In an interesting essay for Chronicle of Higher Education Joan M. Herbers (1) manifests her unease in using the terms ‘slave’ and ‘slavemaking’ while describing ant behavior.
     The reasons of her embarrassment are explained as follows:
     1. ‘By appropriating the terminology of slavery, we scientists are in fact perpetuating racism’, and,
     2. ‘The possibility that using racially loaded metaphors is inherently damaging to ourselves and to our work’.
     Slavery, however, is known also among wholly white or purely black human communities and I don’t consider it as a necessarily racist term more than exploitation, injustice, and other analogous ones.
     But, how big is the risk to be caught in the biological fallacy while using the term slavery while studying ants? Could somebody justify human slavery because a similar behavior with the same name exists under perfectly natural conditions in ants, or, could somebody think that students of Polyergus life admit slavery just because they describe it among ants?
     Actually, the study of ants uses also other anthropomorphic and potentially equivocal terms, like ‘queen’ and ‘soldier’.
     Everybody agrees to avoid anthropomorphism in entomology and this results e.g. in the customary use of words like nest and digestive system instead of house and intestine.
     To keep the distance from anthropomorphism, Dr. Herbers stresses differences between human and ant slavery (as there are between human and insect queens and soldiers) and rejects also the use of the scientifically more correct term ‘dulosis’ since it is derived from the Greek ‘doulos’ (= slave) and should hence suffer of the same implication as slavery. A scientifically better term for insect queens also exist (gynes) but there is no valid alternative term for the insect soldier caste.
     However, nobody ever objected the use of names such as brain or courtship when referred to an insect in spite of the differences with the human homonyms.
     To avoid even the etymological references to slavery implied in the term dulosis, Dr. Herbers proposes a new term for ant slavery: ‘leistic behavior’, from the Greek ‘leister’ (= pirate) (2). Unfortunately, from the same Greek root, Auguste Forel (1848-1931) already created the better and widespread term lestobiosis to characterize thieving behavior of some Diplorhoptrum species.
     It is true that after the classical ‘go to the ant’ (Proverbs 6:6-8) there were a few more examples of improvised sociologists and demagogues taking ant behavior as a model for human societies, but these examples had limited success and not a single practical application. They are destined to remain among the curiosities of history of human thought.

     I would hence tolerate the use of the word ‘slavery’ among ants although dulosis should be preferred.
     In this context one might hypothesize also the reverse procedure, i.e. could terms introduced to describe ant behavior be applied to humans as well? For instance, do social parasites exist among humans or are they restricted to hymenopteran societies? Personally, I think I know some of them and have no scruples in addressing them with the myrmecological term but I must confess that love for good food and good wines already developed in me a beginning of physogastry.

References

(1) Herbers, J. M. 2007. The loaded language of science. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i29/29b00501.htm

(2) There seems to be some confusion about the Greek word from which the term is derived. Herbers gives for pirate “leistos”, the ancient Greek word for prey, while pirate is either “leister” (Odyssey), or “leistor” (Odyssey; Nicandrus). But for robber or pirate there is also the better known, related word “lestes” (Atticus, Herodotus, Thucydides, a. o.) from which lestobiosis was derived.