Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German biologist Bert Holldobler.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
Berthold Karl Hölldobler is a German sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including The Ants, for which he and his co-author, E. O. Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction writing in 1991.
Ants offer special advantages for some important kinds of basic biological research. The colony is a superorganism. It can be analyzed as a coherent unit and compared with the organism in the design of experiments, with the individuals treated as the rough analogues of cells.
The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.
We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play.
If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.