lostonearth35 wrote:
Animals aren't launching nuclear missiles into the air or sending hate mail to women and minorities. They don't have creepy cults, hate groups, and have existed for millions of years without politics or religion. They don't even roll their eyes at me if they see my collection of Funko Pop figures. They aren't committing mass shootings or stabbings.
So why shouldn't I like animals and not people? I don't go to bed at night worrying it's going to be my last night alive because the animals are going to start WWIII with us.
Although ant behavior is so similar to humans its scary. Like when they invade a termite mound in Africa and brutally murder all the termites, including the queen, even though she's like a million times bigger than they are. Amazon ants enslave other ant colonies and basically brainwash them with their pheromones. And then there are the murder hornets that are killing off honeybees. But they're acting out of instinct, they're not aware that what they're doing might be "wrong".
Interesting observation. there are more commonalities between the insects you mentioned and human beings that show correlations but might also indicate causation. Generally, they are all complex societies, Specifically the division of labor and social hierarchy.
In those insects, each individual has a role that is determined biologically (Queens, Workers, Drones). In humans, the roles are divided culturally (Female, Farmer, doctor, soldier), cultural rather than biological because we didn't evolve to be complex societies but rather our exponential growth in numbers as a result of the agricultural revolution naturally arose the need for specializations.
they even exhibit altruistic behavior much like we do. they sacrifice themselves to protect the colony, we go to war and die for our country.
So, the murderous behavior you mentioned could also be a natural characteristic of complex societies where the group is dependent on the individual to function and the individual is dependent on the group to survive. for individuals to behave in this way they must identify with the group, which tends to frame everything else as a threat, as an enemy, as a demon ... nazis identified quite strongly with their group!
I'd like to think that we are better than the insects, but we behave the same. so, either we are acting on instinct as well, or the insects know it's "wrong" but do it anyway just like we do.