The Biological Analogy

[Anonymous]

An interesting analogy...

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Richard Dawkins provides several examples of how cunning parasites can be, and how easy it is to be fooled. The sophistication of some ant species makes the cuckoo look like a novice. He describes a parasitic ant which invades a neighbouring colony, seeks out its queen, climbs on top of it and methodically gnaws off its head. Having usurped the position at the top of this social hierarchy, the alien queen produces eggs which are tended by the invaded colonies' workers, and new queens then go off to invade other colonies.

Even this strategy has been improved upon by another ant species. To quote The Selfish Gene, p. 252 (Dawkins is here referring to the founder of sociobiology, Edward Wilson):